Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A warm sun beat down on a tall, proud castle rising from the hills. It shadowed the homes and bustling people within its proud visage. Inside the courtyard young men trained with swords, while guards solemnly looked on. Scholars came and went through the doors carrying various tools of their trade and servants hurried to prepare food.

High above the busy inhabitants, in one of the less public rooms of the castle, two men were also in a haste.

The door was kicked shut with a loud thud. One of the men started to shush the other but was cut off as he surged forward, holding his head between his hands.

"It is fine, Malik. No one's around." He eagerly pressed his scarred lips to the other's, who briefly pulled away.

"That is because they are all downstairs preparing for the guest that you should be preparing to meet as well, Altaïr. As Mentor-"

Altaïr attempted to connect their mouths again. "I know, I know. Don't worry about it."

Malik frowned at him, still denying a kiss but draping his arm around the master assassin's neck. "Don't worry about it? Altaïr he will be here within the hour."

"I guess we will have to make this quick then, won't we?" Altaïr grinned and kissed Malik for a third time, this time meeting no resistance. He moved his hands slowly down his lover's neck, then chest, to waist, gentle caresses contrasting the fervor with which he was devouring his mouth. Tongues probed each other, roaming and twisting before retreating as teeth came into play. Altaïr pushed their bodies together and a groan rippled between them. Unable to resist, he guided them towards a wall, keeping their mouths together as much as possible.

Malik felt the bump of something hard and flat hit his backside, at which point Altaïr's grip shifted to just below his bottom then tightened. The dark haired man sensed what he was about to do and drew back enough to breathe. "We don't have the time-" he hissed, only to be interrupted by being lifted and firmly sat on top of the desk. He instinctively wrapped his legs around the man who rolled his hips, making him lose his train of thought.

The odds and ends covering the desk clinked and rattled with the rough movements of the two assassins. Malik was mildly uncomfortable and attempted to shift some of the piles of paper out from under him. Altaïr was too impatient and hungrily attacked his neck while sliding a hand up his tunic. Malik gasped at the sudden skin to skin contact and shot his hand out to clutch at Altaïr. In turn Altaïr growled victoriously and moved his hips again. With his head turned to expose his neck Malik perfectly saw the moment a round, golden object started to make a beeline for the edge of the desk.

"Altaïr!"

At the note of alarm in his lover's voice the Grand Master immediately stopped to glance at Malik's face. He followed his line of sight in time to watch the object roll right off the desk and plummet towards the floor.

"Shit!" he yelled as he dove to catch it.

There was a crack and a blinding white light before the two of them were encompassed in a suffocating pressure. The feeling of stretching farther than should be possible was warring with extreme vertigo. Their bodies felt heavy yet weightless at the same time, and their organs seemed confused as to which does what function. Their vision was washed out by the light and in their ears rang a high-pitched note. After a brief moment of this there was a sudden pop, the sensation of their bodies snapping into place, a rush of cold wind, and they were falling.

A loud screech pervaded the air. Altaïr rolled from his stomach to sitting on his haunches, too dizzy to stand. Malik, who was underneath him, sat up as well and gingerly rubbed the back of his head. He looked down to see he had landed on his back on a strange black surface. It was rough and covered in pebbles, but flat and wide. Two yellow lines stretched in either direction. Less than a meter away a sleek black... thing was stopped. It had a sour burning smell coming from it that made the two wrinkle their noses. The sun shone off of its reflective surface, highlighting silver metal adorning the front. Holding it up were four wide, black and silver wheels with lines of burn marks trailing behind them. Heat radiated from the bulky front.

The large wheeled thing was not the only strange part of their surroundings. On either side of the flat surface towered green pine trees, and a chilly wind blew through the air. Even the sky seemed to have a different hue than before. This was certainly not Masyaf.

Altaïr made it to his feet and held out his hand to help Malik up. He accepted but narrowed his eyes at the other, a frown gracing his features. "Altaïr," he growled lowly. "Where are we? What is that thing?"

"Um..." He blinked and looked around. "This is not Masyaf."

"No shit."

"Well..." Altaïr turned in a complete circle, shooting a cautious glance at the black behemoth sitting still not too far away. "I am not sure. Do you know where this is?"

Malik's frown deepened. "If I knew that, I would not be asking you." He gestured at the trees behind him. "The most I can tell is that we are not in the same country any more. Those do not grow where we live."

The blood drained from Altaïr's face. He felt an argument coming and braced himself.

"What exactly did you do?" Malik ground out, his face growing angry. They were supposed to be getting ready for an important meeting, not figuring out wherever the strange device that caused nothing but trouble had somehow whisked them away to.

Altaïr threw up his arms in defense. "I didn't do anything! It was the Apple! When it fell-"

"Because of your carelessness! God! You should have gotten rid of that thing the moment you knew what it was!"

"I didn't know what exactly it was! I still don't, not really."

---

As the two exchanged words in what was quickly becoming a heated argument, the sides of the black object opened up. Out of it stepped a pair of tall men, confused but wary. They went seemingly unnoticed by the bickering people in white robes.

"Should you ask or should I?" The shorter man asked over the top of the car. He was answered with a jerk of the chin and he shrugged, tucking his weapon back inside his jacket. He strode up to the two, a smile plastered on his face.

"Excuse me, are you two alright?"

"Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad," hissed the one with black hair, sounding a bit like a mother chastising her child.

"Habibi," the other said warningly.

It was like they hadn't even seen him approach. "Excuse me," the man tried again. Neither responded to him, instead continuing to argue. "Hello?" He looked between them, a bit annoyed, then actually registered what they were spitting at each other. Immediately he scuttled back to his brother.

"Sammy, you go. I can't understand them."

Sam's brow furrowed. "What do you mean?"

"They aren't speaking English. You're the smart one. I figure you might know what they're saying," he huffed.

As if on cue one of them shouted something at the other. Dean had no idea what it was, but the way they were delivered suggested it was a string of profanities. Sam ran a hand through his hair.

"Pretty sure that was Arabic. I hate to break it to you Dean, but I don't speak Arabic."

Dean put his hands on his hips. "Well that's just great. Two random dudes pop out of thin air and they could be victims or monsters and we wouldn't know which because of something as stupid as a language barrier."

"Just keep trying, in case they do know English, too. Maybe see if you can stop them from fighting? I'll try to figure out how to solve this," Sam said.

Dean raised an eyebrow. "Alright man. Betcha I'm not gonna get very far, though." He swung himself back around and trudged to the argument that seemed like it might escalate to violence very soon.

"Hey, guys, come on," he tried placatingly.

Sam meanwhile closed his door and paced in front of the Impala. He had of course immediately thought of a way to translate, but he wanted to avoid that if possible. Cas was busy enough without having to come down to play middle man. But neither Sam nor Dean knew any Arabic, nor a language close to it. The strangers seemed too absorbed in their quarrel to answer Dean, provided they knew English which wasn't a guarantee. Sam could probably pull up a translator on his laptop or cell phone, but with how rapid-fire they were going it probably wouldn't register. He sighed, hoping he wasn't being too bothersome with what he was about to do.

'Cas, we could use your help down here. Two guys appeared out of thin air and we can't understand whatever language they're speaking,' he thought up at the sky. For good measure he added 'Dean's about to try and break up the fight they're having.'

"They are speaking Arabic."

Sam jumped at the voice beside him. Castiel always had a knack for scaring the boys with his sudden and unannounced appearances. "Cas, hi. Uh. You weren't too busy with the other angels?"

"I have a momentary break, so to speak. It's strange, though." The angel tilted his head and squinted his eyes.

"Strange that you have a break?"

Cas shook his head. "No. The way those two are speaking Arabic hasn't been used by humans in roughly 800 years."

Sam did a double take. "What?"

"The language fundamentally hasn't changed, but the syntax is different. To put it simply, if it were English you would have difficulty understanding what they meant, but you would know most of the words."

Dean was furtively trying to butt in. "Come on now. Whatever issue you guys have with each other you can work out, right? Let’s just all calm down.”

The shorter one was gesturing at Dean now as the other, hooded one was raising his voice in what sounded like protest. Observing them Dean noted that neither were dressed in “normal” clothes. They both had a white get up head to toe accented in red, but the angry one with a frown etched permanently in his face was wearing a black robe over his white ones while his counterpart had his sharp hood pulled up to cover the top half of his face in darkness. It was actually a pretty cool design, with a hooked point reminiscent of a bird, crisply angled cuts around the bottom, a cloak around the shoulders with ornate trim... It did well to distract from the blade sheaths that blended in easily as possible decorations. As the short one swung his right arm Dean caught a glimpse of possible weapons on him as well. That made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, but he tried not to let his discovery show on his face.

Suddenly the short one pushed the other. He didn’t move much, but stood his ground and let him do it again. Then he thumped his hand onto the black robed one’s shoulder in a not-so-friendly manner and muttered angrily.

“Hey, hey!” Dean finally physically stepped in, fed up with their constant denial of his presence. He moved to put a hand on both of their shoulders to push them apart if need be but the hooded one whirled on him elbow-first, knocking his arm away.

“What the hell do you want,” he hissed in perfect English. Dean was so taken aback by this that he could only blink and hope his jaw wasn’t dropped as far as it felt. Impatiently the man huffed. “You have been bothering us for attention for a while now, despite us purposefully ignoring you. Now that you have rudely interrupted our conversation you better have a good reason for it. If you have nothing to say then leave us alone.”

Dean’s brows drew together and he snapped up straight. “Hang on a minute now, conversation? That looked more like you two were ready to tear each other apart.” He waved his hand between them for emphasis. He noticed the other one was staring at the hooded man with about the same expression Dean probably had on his face a moment ago.

Although he couldn’t see it, Dean sensed an eye roll. “Not that it is any of your business, but that is how our conversations normally are. Did you have nothing to ask besides that?”

“I have a question,” Castiel said, walking up to the group with Sam trailing behind him. Sam’s gun was tucked away once more and he looked very apprehensive. The two strangers shifted uneasily away, standing almost shoulder to shoulder. Now that he was in better view the pinned up sleeve of the shorter man became obvious.

“Why are you speaking with an American accent?” Cas questioned the hooded man. It seemed to just confuse him.

“A… what?”

“An American accent,” Cas repeated. “More specifically the United States of America, which you are currently in. This country was not colonized by European nations until the late fifteenth century, however the Arabic you were speaking comes from three hundred years earlier than that.” He narrowed his sharp blue eyes. “Who are you?”

Face pale, the man looked between the three in front of him. He gazed back at his companion only to see him looking even more lost than he was. “Malik?”

Malik peered at him like he was a foreign specimen. “What is this? You know what these people are saying?” he asked incredulously.

“Yes, somehow,” came the slow response. “Do… you not know this language? I thought for sure it was one you would have learned. More importantly… I think this one knows where we are.” He gestured at Cas.

Dean tensed. What the hell was going on? They were speaking some kind of old Arabic? He figured their clothes were from a different culture but he thought they were just really traditional or something. Perplexingly they seemed utterly confused that one of them had an American accent, too, which made little sense as to why he wouldn't know what he was speaking.

“Uh, Cas? Mind explaining what’s going on? Or, ya know, when the heck you got down here?”

The angel didn’t turn to him, continuing to stare at the duo huddled in hushed conversation. “Sam asked for help translating, since it seemed like you were about to get involved in a fight if you couldn’t speak with them. But I am fairly certain these two are not from this time.”

The hooded man shot him a glance. “That would be impossible.”

“No, it’s not,” Cas said matter-of-fact. He took a step forward, causing them to take a step back. “I will ask you one more time,” he spoke in Arabic. “Who are you?”

They exchanged a glance before the taller one clenched his fist and replied. “My name is Altaïr Ibn-La’ahad, and this is Malik Al-Sayf. Who are you?”

“I am Castiel, Angel of the Lord.”

Altaïr snorted. Even Malik looked skeptical.

“I’m guessing he told them he’s an angel,” Dean said wryly to his brother. Sam only crossed his arms, but silently agreed. The reaction to Cas’ introduction was usually the same derivative noise of disbelief.

“You doubt me, but you are clearly not in the same time period. I can sense it. On some level you know this as well.”

Altaïr shifted uncomfortably. “Prove it.”

With the sound of fluttering wings Castiel appeared behind them. “Will this suffice?”

Altaïr and Malik spun on their heels. Cas found himself with a blade pressed to either side of his neck. Their reflexes were impressive, to say the least. Malik had drawn a dagger, short and simple, while Altaïr had his arm extended and a hidden blade protruded from beneath his wrist. The brothers realized the situation and in turn drew their own weapons.

“Sam, Dean, that is unnecessary,” Cas intoned. "Their weapons aren't able to hurt me."

Altaïr frowned deeply, but reluctantly spared a glance behind them. He squinted at the things in Dean and Sam’s hands which they were still adamantly pointing at them. Vaguely he thought they were silly looking, before he recognized what they were. The Apple had shown him many things, and amongst them he had seen these contraptions. They were very dangerous tools but as far as he knew did not exist.

He already discovered the Apple could show him glimpses of the future. He was not aware it had the power to bring him there, though. With the infeasible things it had already proven capable of, he was starting to think that maybe they had in fact traveled through time. However, he wasn’t willing to reveal everything any time soon. He wanted to avoid knowledge about the Apple’s existence becoming known if he possibly could.

Slowly Altaïr lowered his blade. “Malik, I think he is telling the truth.”

“What! Just because he claims to be some holy being and is quick you suddenly believe this lunatic? Do you really think that because we are in a foreign land with a foreign tongue that we somehow ignored the passage of many years? That would be impossible.” Malik looked anxiously at Altaïr, the two strangely dressed men holding the mysterious metal objects, the large contraption parked in the middle of the abnormal stone path, the supposed angel who undeniably passed by them undetected in the blink of an eye, and back to Altaïr. “Why?”

Hidden blade retracting, Altaïr sighed. “It is hard to explain right now, but I have my suspicions. Besides, we should know by now that that which is seemingly impossible might be possible, yes?” he asked pointedly.

Malik narrowed his eyes. After a long pause, he conceded and withdrew his dagger. "Alright. For now, I will play along."

"Thank you." Castiel turned his attention on the brothers. "You can put the guns down. Everything is fine."

"No, everything is not fine," Dean said, although he and Sam were tucking their guns back in their places. "If they really did come from the past I want to know what they're doing here and how they got here."

Altaïr's expression soured. "I am not sure of how we came here. One moment we were in Masyaf, the next there was a blinding light and we were here."

"That narrows things." Sam crossed his arms. "As far as we know there's only two ways to time travel. Considering one of them involves a lot of prep work, I'm guessing it was angel-related."

"Actually there are several ways," Castiel corrected. "But most of them aren't well known."

"Wow, okay, that's news," Dean said, blinking in disbelief.

Cas looked chagrined. "Well many of them are tied to objects which have been lost or destroyed throughout history. Since they are so rare and can potentially be abused the angels gathered up the ones they could find and locked them away in Heaven."

Dean scratched the back of his head, thinking of how best to tiptoe around the subject. "At least they're extra safe now?" He tried. The corners of Cas' mouth turned just the barest bit down and he lowered his gaze to the ground. Dean immediately regretted bringing it up; he hated seeing Cas beat himself up with guilt over accidentally kicking all of the angels out of Heaven and permanently closing it off. He floundered for something to backtrack on but Sam luckily came to his aid.

"Okay, so there's a possibility of an angel or an object doing this. Maybe there’s even a god still out there who can control time and has some sort of beef with..." He peered at the two. "I'm sorry, what are your names?"

Altaïr rolled his eyes. "Altaïr," he held a hand in front of himself before moving it to his companion. "Malik."

Sam only looked a little annoyed by his tone of voice. "Pleased to meet you. I'm Sam and this is my brother Dean." He hooked a thumb at the blonde who was watching the angel pace, his brows furrowed in thought.

Malik gave what could be construed as a short puff of laughter at the way Altaïr talked as if speaking to a child. It reminded him of how he'd often speak to Altaïr when he was being particularly thick. "What were they talking about that required such charm?" Malik asked, subtly implying he would like him to translate without outright stating he needed his help.

"They're discussing the means by which we might have ended up here," he grumbled. "They all sound very outlandish." Although he saw his eyes widen a fraction, he knew Malik didn't want anyone knowing about the Piece of Eden they possessed either. Malik distrusted that thing the most, but he agreed it was better kept in their hands and away from those who might abuse it.

Suddenly a thought struck him. He carefully ran his hands down the sides of his robes, his belt, even checking the back and inside of his cloak. Furtively he started searching at the area around them whilst trying to not bring too much attention to them.

Malik looked confused at his sudden urgent searching. "What?" he whispered. Altaïr gave the barest shake of his head. He stole a glance at the three still talking about which objects a certain Heaven had claimed (still very skeptical about them not being insane) and seeing that their attention was diverted he mimed something falling. Malik took a moment to realize what he meant and felt the blood drain from his face. He quickly cast his eyes to the road and the small grassy areas on either side. Unfortunately there was not so much as a telling glint of gold, and the ground sloped down and away into the trees. If it had fallen anywhere but the flat surface of the worn black tar it was very likely to have rolled down the hill into the forest. If it even came with them, that was.

Their search was interrupted by Cas clearing his throat. "Regardless, we do have a way to get you back home."

Altaïr blanched. "Um, you do?"

"Yes," Castiel affirmed. "Though I am somewhat... lacking in power, I can send you two back to your proper time."

Shocked, Sam and Dean tried to talk to Cas all at once.

"You don't have enough power to-"

"Cas, dude, no way! That could kill-"

He hushed them both with raised hands. "I know you're both worried, but I believe I can do it. I will be severely drained afterward, yes, but alive."

"No." Dean crossed his arms and glared at him. "Not an option, Cas. The last time you had to do your time mumbo jumbo without full mojo the risks were enormous. Hell you could have died just trying to get enough juice to do it.”

Cas frowned, but before he could respond Altaïr spoke up. “Don’t we have a say in this?”

They turned to him. “What, you don’t want to go back?” Dean scoffed.

Altaïr narrowed his eyes at him, which was moot since they were pretty much hidden from view, but continued. “I do, but if something sent us here, it must have been for a reason.” Silently he hoped his bullshitting was working. He regarded Malik for a beat. “I think we both agree that we would rather stay here until this is solved.”

The trio shared a disapproving scowl. Worried that they would force them back anyway, without the Apple, Altaïr tightened his fist. They couldn’t make them leave if they couldn’t catch them, if it came to that. The brothers looked like they would be a bit of a challenge to fight, but nothing he and Malik couldn’t handle. The angel looked like easy picking, though, if it weren’t for the teleportation, if that was real. Not to mention if he was an angel- not saying he was, he didn’t even look like one- he could have untold powers.

“Alright,” Dean caved. “You can stay. The more information we have the better.”

“Dean,” Cas warned. “It could be dangerous to have people from the past stay in a time they are not meant to be in.”

He shrugged. “The way I see it they’re evidence. Evidence we can use to trace whatever it is that’s messing with things. Maybe we can even make that thing reverse what it did. Plus it means you don’t have to use up your grace.”

“He has a point,” Sam chided.

Cas looked uncomfortable with the idea of them staying longer than was strictly necessary. “Alright,” he conceded. “But as soon as this is over they have to go back. Who knows what staying here could do to them?”

Chapter Text

After much coaxing and a lot of reassurances, the five of them were crammed into the Impala. It smelled of some kind of greasy food and one of the windows was cracked open to let the smell and extra body heat out into the crisp, cool autumn air. Castiel sat wedged in between Malik and Altaïr in the back seat explaining how vehicles worked to them while Sam chipped in a simplified version of all the technical babble every now and then for Cas to translate. Dean sat in the driver’s seat in front of Altaïr looking bemused the entire ride, occasionally adding in his two cents on which cars were better or how difficult it was to find a certain part and what things you could use to improvise in case of a motor emergency. Although neither time traveler comprehended what he was talking about half the time, Dean made sure to go off on full tangents to explain things even they knew.

“Where exactly are we going?” Altaïr interrupted one of his rants. Honestly he was getting tired of all this information being spewed at him and most especially Dean’s attitude of treating them like they thought everything they didn’t understand was magic. Sam was at least genuinely trying to be nice, but Dean just came off as condescending every time he stopped to explain a basic concept. Malik looked ready to drive a blade through the back of his skull, and he was getting a secondhand version of the man’s words.

“A little town a few miles from here,” Dean piped up. “There was a strange death reported there a few days ago, so me and Sammy were headed that way to check it out when you two showed up.”

Altaïr tilted his head. “Why would you go there because of that?”

Dean eyeballed him through the rearview mirror. “Strange deaths are usually the sign of something supernatural going bump in the night,” he said solemnly.

“He means a monster,” Sam spoke, sparing the suffering of his brother’s dramatics. He usually got this way when he didn’t like someone, and clearly he had it out for these two. “Or a ghost. Or a demon. Basically a lot of things people believe are just myths are in fact real. Dean and I hunt these things for a living.”

“I see,” Altaïr said, clearly not buying it.

“What?” Malik asked.

“They’re saying they hunt down monsters and demons,” Altaïr provided, waving his hand. Malik raised an eyebrow.

“Are they serious? Who would actively search them out to- what, kill them?”

Altaïr shrugged. “They said they were on their way to find one when we appeared.”

Malik contemplated his words. “If they hunt beings that aren’t human or animal, then why have they not killed this so-called angel?” he inquired.

“They have tried that already,” Castiel divulged. “The first time Dean saw me he attempted to destroy me in every way he knew how. He failed, of course. Hunters were unaware of the existence of angels for a long time, and angels are much harder to kill than most things.” Emphasis seemed to be placed on that last sentence, as if to reassure them that they would not be able to harm him in the least.

“Are you talking about me?” Dean chimed in. “Coulda sworn I heard my name thrown in there.”

“Did they keep you around because they couldn’t kill you?” Malik asked, curious and deliberately blocking out Dean.

“That’s why I kept you around,” Altaïr mumbled. Malik shot him an icy glare.

“No,” Cas replied, either not noticing the remark or ignoring it. He seemed to struggle around choosing what to say. “It’s… complicated. Right now we are close friends.”

Altaïr noted his wording but decided not to comment.

“Um… Altaïr?” Sam asked, trying his name out for the first time. He hoped he hadn’t butchered it too badly.

“Yes?”

Sam turned in his seat to face him. “I’ve been meaning to ask you this, and I know Cas pointed it out earlier, but why is it that you speak American English so well if you’re from 800 years in the past?”

That was not a good question. How was he supposed to say he picked it up from a mystical golden ball that could control minds and create stunningly convincing illusions out of nothing? He had to think of a lie fast.

“I am not sure myself.” That sounded convincing.

“Right. Also, if you can speak it then why can’t Oscar the Grouch back there?” Dean nodded his head at Malik.

Altaïr’s brows furrowed at the phrase. “His name is Malik, not Oscar the Grouch. I don’t know why he cannot understand this language. Who is this Oscar the Grouch?”

“He’s… it’s… nevermind. What I want to know is why whatever whisked you two away gave you a new language anyway, and only you.”

Unable to come up with a convincing enough lie, Altaïr stayed silent. They were approaching dangerous territory, and he didn’t even want to hint at the object that caused this. He was more concerned with finding a way to get back to where they had appeared and searching the area- without the strangers.

They came upon a sign that had writing Altaïr fuzzily knew but could not read.

“Pen-sil-vanya?” Malik attempted, peering out the window.

Sam blinked, looking back at him. “Er, close. It’s Pennsylvania. You can read that?”

He was met with a blank stare.

Altaïr sighed, as if it were a great burden to be the medium. “Those characters on the sign are used in French, right? We were taught how to read, write, and speak it. I can’t remember much of French, but Malik knows it.”

“Dude no way.” Sam eagerly bounced in his seat. “Vous parlez français?”

Malik perked up, his face alight. “Oui. Vous aussi?”

“Je comprends un peu,” Sam admitted.

“What the fuck?” Dean spared a glance at his brother. “You speak French?”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Yes Dean. Unlike you I liked taking classes in school.”

Altaïr hid a small twitch of a smile. It sounded like him and Malik. The Order encouraged them to learn French in order to better know their enemies during their training. It wasn’t a requirement to be fluent, just proficient enough to understand threats and commands, even ask a few questions. While Altaïr had failed miserably, Malik excelled and even kept up with his language studies.

“This is good,” Castiel droned, startling everyone. “Now that communication is easier, I must leave.”

“What, already?” Dean nearly pouted. “You just got here.”

“Yes, I know. But I have stayed away from the others long enough. The angels need me.”

With that he was gone. Malik and Altaïr stared at each other through the space that had previously been occupied.

Sam ran a hand through his long hair and blew out a puff of air. Dean looked annoyed so he attempted to console his brother. “He is a busy guy, Dean. We’re lucky he even came and stayed as long as he did.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Dean grumbled. He turned on his blinker and pulled the car into a shady parking lot of a motel. It had a weathered sign proclaiming it as the 'Mo e 7', the other letters completely missing. Across the road stood a gas station, and not much further were a couple of fast food joints. The town was clearly used to being just a pit stop, and many other businesses were likely swarmed around this road.

“Alright Sammy, you check in and I’ll take these losers shopping.” He tossed a couple of crinkled bills at his brother. “We shouldn’t be long.”

Sam gathered the money, confused. “Shopping? What do you need to go shopping for?”

Dean leveled his eyes at him. “Do you not see what these two are wearing? They stick out like a sore thumb. If we’re gonna be dragging their carcasses around I’d rather them look a little less conspicuous.”

Altaïr frowned. “You do realize I can hear you, right?”

“Alright, alright. I’ll text you the room number. Try not to be an ass, alright?” Sam climbed out of the car, swung his bag over his shoulder, and slammed the creaky door shut.

Dean watched him go with a smug smirk on his face. “Can’t make any promises.”

--

Altaïr and Malik found themselves floundering in what had to be the strangest situation they'd ever been in. People dressed in colorful, close-fitting clothes surrounded them, a chilly wind pervaded the air, and loud music blaring from seemingly no where. Cars rumbled down the road behind them, giving off a putrid smoke. The ground seemed almost entirely made up of flat stone with the occasional square of grass or thin tree poking out. Fencing in the street were tall buildings with glass windows that combined with lazy white clouds to block out a fair amount of sunlight. The people that passed by gave them strange looks and a couple even commented on how weird they were. It was loud and smelly and kind of like the marketplace but with less shouting.

All of this was just as soon as they stepped out of the car.

"Come on, ya tourists," Dean sighed, ushering the two into the store he parked in front of. "Time to get you looking like you're actually from this decade."

Dean nearly dragged them over to the Men's department of the quaint little store. It stank of perfume, and some indie pop song was quietly filtering in through the speakers, but it wasn't terribly busy. The few customers that were there scrutinized the trio, one guy in grey actually knocking into a stand as he stared. Dean ignored the eyes and began searching for something that might roughly fit them. It was hard to tell their size with all the robes they were wearing.

"E-excuse me sirs. Do you need any help?" A salesclerk timidly approached them. She had on her best professional smile despite clearly feeling uneasy and stealing curious glances at the men in elaborate dress.

Dean turned to her, raising an appreciative eyebrow at the low cut of her black dress. Her curly brown hair was pulled back in a tight bun and a simple silver necklace was draped around her neck. Her name-tag read 'Janine.' "Yeah, sweetheart. Trying to find something for my friends here. They're, uh, visiting America for the first time and don't have our sizes where they come from."

"Oh, alright." She perked up, her smile coming more naturally and her shoulders lowering. "Just let me grab my measuring tape and we can get your pants sizes right away. If you two can go back to the dressing rooms and undress-"

Dean saw Altaïr about to vehemently object and held out a hand. "Uh, do you think you could do it without having them strip? I don't think they'd really be... up for that. Couple of shy guys, y'know?"

"Oh yes, sorry! We get plenty of people like that." Janine peered at them and bit her lip. "I can't really get accurate measurements with layers of clothes in the way. But I can try to guess..." She trailed off as she eyed them up and down, turning a slow circle around them in a way they didn't seem to appreciate. The woman hummed to herself then turned her attention to the rack of jeans behind them. She quickly leafed through it and picked out two blue pairs. "Go ahead and try these on, please. They might not fit, but they should be in the right ballpark and we can figure out whether to go bigger or smaller from there."

They stared at the pants she was holding out to them like they were poisonous snakes. Dean tried to dispel the awkwardness.

"Come on guys. Do what the nice lady says."

Altaïr glared at him, but took the clothes from her anyway and handed a pair to Malik who frowned down at the article.

"This smells funny."

"Just play along until we can get away from these morons, alright?" Altaïr sighed. "Besides, as assassins it is our duty to blend in." His only answer was a grunt.

Janine blushed and put a hand to her cheek. "Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize... Um, do you not speak English?"

Altaïr waved a hand. "Do not worry, I do. My friend does not though so I am just translating for him."

Her smile returned. "Alright. The dressing rooms are back there." She pointed at a short, wide hallway in the back corner of the store. On all sides were wooden doors covered in slats.

"Thank you," Altaïr said politely before tugging on Malik's djellaba and leading him over to the rooms.

After watching them go out of earshot, Dean thanked Janine who went to help another customer struggling to pull down a dress. He tugged his cell phone out of his pocket, scrolled through his contacts, hit dial, and shoved the phone between his shoulder and ear before shifting through a pile of graphic tees.

"I already sent you the room number."

"Sammy, what are we going to do about them?"

"What do you mean? Did you piss them off again?"

Dean found a decent shirt and pulled it out, comparing it to himself. "I mean we still have a case here. We can't just babysit them while we work." He tossed the shirt over his arm and went back to digging.

There was a long breath on the other side of the line. "Yeah, I know. But they are a case, too, you know. Plus they seem to be taking all of this surprisingly well. Maybe we can take them with us?"

Dean snorted and lowered his voice. "Are you kidding me? They’re like lost little lambs with itchy trigger fingers. Or, well, knife fingers?"

"Well we can't exactly leave them in the room the entire time."

"Why not?" He pulled out another shirt and held it up.

"Dean. They just jumped eight hundred years into the future. Would you rather have them adjust where we can keep an eye on them and answer any questions they might have or alone in some shabby motel room full of electric equipment and cleaning ladies that can drop in at any minute?"

"You just said that they seem to be taking this well." The shirt joined the other over his arm. He shifted the phone to his hand and went to search for something else. "I don't know man. I'm not really keen on dragging Tweedledee and Tweedledum on a case. Besides, you saw how quick they were to turn on Cas."

"All the more reason to keep them in our sights," Sam pointed out.

"I guess," Dean groaned. He glanced at the changing rooms where faint bickering could be heard. "Alright. Lemme get these sour lemons their clothes and we'll see you in a bit." He hung up and tucked his phone back in his pocket. A quick survey of the coats hanging in front of him and he grabbed two that looked about right, then headed to the back of the store.

"Everything alright in there?" He asked. A hiss of Arabic came from one of the stalls, threatening and drawn out.

"...He says this is stupid," explained the stall next to it.

"Sure." Dean nodded. "Well I got you two some more stuff to put on. Incoming." He tossed the clothes over the doors and heard curses coupled with a thump. Chuckling, Dean sat on one of the low seats provided in the nook.

There was a lot of rustling, some more cursing, and a groan of frustration. "What the hell is with these little metal bits? They're damn difficult to hook- ow!"

Dean smirked. "Yeah. They're called zippers. They're on most clothes."

"Why?" He sounded exasperated. Dean just laughed.

"You think you're having trouble? Try doing this with one arm," Malik spat. "And before you offer, no I do not need any help."

Altaïr bit his tongue and resisted the urge. He knew Malik hated anyone thinking he was incapable because of his missing limb, and would beat them senseless if they showed any pity. He knew respecting Malik's wishes to be treated no differently was important to him, so he tried his best to do so.

Tugging on the hood of the coat Dean had thrown him, Altaïr stepped out. He pulled on the front of it, uncomfortable with how the clothes felt on his skin and how obvious the weapons he had re-strapped to himself were.

"Thought you might appreciate the white hoodies." Dean looked him up and down, lingering on the bulges in his jacket. "Hold on a second." He got up and shuffled over to the racks of coats. He pulled out a black leather jacket with easy fasteners and a large wooly collar. It was just bulky enough to smooth over any hidden weapons. After a moment of thought he also grabbed a long dark tweed number with large pockets. He took his finds back to the two looking displeased at each other in front of their dressing stalls.

"Here," he said, handing the leather to Altaïr and the tweed to Malik. "It'll help conceal your knives and shit. Besides, the weather's getting colder so the more layers the better."

Altaïr raised an eyebrow. "...Thanks."

Dean shrugged. "Whatever. The pants look like they fit, so let's go check out."

After they bagged their robes and the clerk graciously let them wear the new clothes out (hunting down duplicates to scan and helping them pull off the tags once they paid), the three made their way back to the motel. Sam was already set up at a table with his laptop, which he returned to tapping away at once he let them inside.

"Did you find anything?" Dean asked, hefting his duffel onto the bed closest to the door. Malik and Altaïr stood by the door awkwardly, inspecting the room from where they were standing. Eventually curiosity got the better of them and they started wandering.

"Yeah. So the lady in the paper, Margaret Goldman, aged 32, went missing last Friday. She was found dead at her workplace three days later. Her head was bashed in with a blunt object and her arms were missing. Police described it as looking like they were torn clear out of their sockets."

"Yeesh."

Sam dipped his head. "Yeah, no kidding. There was no trace of them, though. No blood anywhere. Her coworkers said she worked late most nights, so no one saw or heard anything the night she went missing."

Dean put his hands on his hips. "Any organs gone?"

Sam shook his head. "None that were filed in the report. Just the arms. Preliminary examinations though estimate that she died the night she went missing." He swatted at Altaïr who had started pushing buttons on his computer. The man frowned but retracted his hand.

"Huh." Dean scratched his chin. "If she was in her workplace for three days, how did nobody notice until Monday?"

"That's the kicker," Sam grumbled. "She worked at a morgue. Her corpse was stuffed into one of the body freezers."

"What is a 'body freezer'?" Altaïr inquired.

"It's a large drawer for keeping dead bodies cold."

"Why would you want to do that?"

Sam closed his laptop, as Altaïr was still eying it as if contemplating touching it again. "To stop them from decomposing.” Altaïr gave a slow blink. “So you can have time to identify them or study them and find out what killed them," Sam added.

"And you think a... What did you call them? Supernatural thing? You think that did this?"

"Well, maybe. Most killers don't rip arms out of their sockets."

Altaïr shrugged and walked over to watch Malik mess with the switch on a lamp. He leaned in and began murmuring something to him, which Malik simply grunted at.

Sam let out a puff of air. "So, shall we head down to the morgue and check it out?"

"What, take them on an interview?" Dean hooked his thumb at the two grown men playing with a light.

Sam smiled, bemused. "They don't have to say anything. Besides, we can't split up to check the body and question the coworkers if they're at the same place."

Dean rolled his eyes. He carefully extracted his suit from its protective bag and strode across the room, slamming the bathroom door shut behind him.

Chapter Text

“Are those two alright?” The twenty-something redhead leaned around the agent in front of her, pushing up her black rimmed glasses.

Sam stepped to the side, blocking her view of the guys fidgeting in the corner with absolutely wide eyes. They couldn’t seem to pick a single thing to look at; the weird people, the expanses of cool metal, the blinding lights, or the table with a white sheet covering what was clearly a body.

“They’re fine.” Sam cleared his throat. “They’re, uh, new. Just here to observe. You were saying, Miss Woods?”

The woman scrunched up her nose, but shrugged. “Well, it’s just like I told the cops. I had to clean out the empty cold chambers around eight in the morning. Our freezing unit acts up sometimes, so ice forms every now and then on the chambers that aren’t being opened and closed with use. I went to pull out the drawer for one of them and saw something in there. I thought I accidentally opened up the wrong chamber, but then I noticed the body didn’t have a sheet.” She visibly swallowed. “So I pulled out the drawer and saw Ms. Goldman lying there, dead. I screamed and ran to get the security guard, who called the cops.”

Sam nodded in understanding. “Were you close with her?”

Woods shook her head. “I didn’t know Ms. Goldman that well personally. Mostly she just had me get her a coffee or a file. She treated me more like a secretary.”

“What about the night she went missing? Can you tell us what happened that day?”

She pushed up her glasses again, a frown creasing her face. “I had to go home early to study for an exam. I gave her her usual cup of coffee with two sugars, asked if she needed anything else before I had to go. She said no, she had a meeting later on she had to get ready for. Then I left.”

Dean looked up from his notepad. “What kind of meeting?”

“She wouldn’t tell me, and I didn’t ask. Ms. Goldman doesn’t really like people prying into her business. She has always been a very professional person.” Woods shoved her hands into the pockets of her white lab coat. “Honestly I didn’t get along that well with her, but to think she’d be here scolding me one minute and lying on one of those things the next…” She looked to the white sheet, her face taught.

Sam placed an empathetic hand on her arm. “Thank you. You can go.” She said nothing, only nodded and quickly stepped out of the room, hand to her lips.

“Wow. She pulls off the ‘hot nerd’ look really well. Who do we got next?” Dean asked, flipping through his notes.

Sam looked down at his own notepad. “Peter Korey. He was the last person to see the vic alive.”

“Er, please, could you refrain from calling her a… the ‘v’ word?” A squirrelly man in his mid-thirties popped his balding head into the doorway. “It just… doesn’t sound right.”

Dean raised an eyebrow. “Peter Korey?”

The man nodded his head, stepping into the room. “Just Peter, please.”

“Sure. So can you run us through what happened that night with Ms. Goldman, Peter?”

Peter rubbed one of his arms. “Y-yeah. Well, Margaret was staying late- as usual, of course. She was a bit of a workaholic. She always said she preferred the night hours anyway. Less people to distract her.”

Altaïr mouthed the word ‘workaholic’, forming the syllables with exaggerated motions. Malik leveled a gaze at him and he stopped, a faint blush on his cheeks as he looked away.

“Anyway, she said wanted to talk to me before I left. I agreed and just went about my day. Nothing really abnormal.” He crossed his arms, worry lines developing on his forehead. “When we met after my shift, she started going on about misplaced files. I tend to be a bit air-headed every now and then, and I mix things up a lot. That’s why when Holly- er, Miss Woods- started interning here Margaret piled a bunch of work on her.”

Peter stared back at the door. “Poor Holly. She got such a tough workload because of me. The stress got to them I guess. Whenever they were in a room together you could tell how annoyed they were at each other.”

Sam tapped his pen on his notepad. “Um, you were talking about the meeting, Peter?”

Peter’s shoulders rose, and he focused his eyes at the ground. “R-right! Sorry.” He uncrossed his arms and began fiddling with his thumbs. “There’s really not much more to it than that. I apologized profusely. She was upset, and said I wasn’t off the hook yet, but it was getting late so she let me go. I got my things together, locked my office and left.”

“And that was the last you saw of her?”

He loosely waved a hand at the body. “Well, until Monday when… everything happened of course.”

Sam nodded. He flipped to a new page. “How close were you with Ms. Goldman?”

“Oh me and Margaret go way back. We’ve been working together for fifteen years now.” Peter rubbed the back of his neck. “I, uh, kind of always looked up to her. She was the more competent one, y’know? Our morgue never got a lot of ‘action’.” He motioned honest-to-god air quotes. “Mostly highway accidents and heart attacks in this small town. But Margaret, Margaret kept this place running like a well-oiled machine. I think the only reason I wasn’t fired from the start was because she convinced everyone to give me a chance.” Peter glanced sadly back down at the floor. “She was a good friend.”

Dean clapped him on the back, causing him to startle. “Sorry for your loss, pal.”

Although he seemed a twitch annoyed with Dean’s abruptness, Peter dipped his head and exited. Dean placed his notepad inside his jacket’s inner pocket and rubbed his hands together.

“So, no one was around when she got ganked, there was no surveillance footage of the attack, and the night guard didn’t hear a peep.”

His brother strolled over to the table with the body. “Yeah, it’s not a good start. Let’s check on the body first, then get a hold of the security tapes anyway.” He pulled back the white cloth, revealing the waxy pale face of a woman in her thirties. Her blond bob was disheveled and a golf ball-sized clump was matted with blood. She was stripped down for examination, and the two messy hunks of pulp where her arms used to be were nothing more than bits of bone and glaring red meat.

Sam and Dean curled their lips in distaste. It wasn’t their first body, but the gruesome sight never got easier.

Altaïr and Malik, however, shuffled over from their banishment corner to take a closer peek. Malik reached out and Dean stood straighter.

“Hey,” he barked. Malik only spared him a glare of annoyance and grabbed the top of Margaret’s head anyway. He turned it to the side so the wound on her head was in better view. Dean shot a look over to his brother who only shrugged helplessly.

“This did not kill her,” Malik droned in French. He sounded as if he were talking about a clipping in a newspaper rather than the dead body in front of him.

“Wh-what?” Sam asked, hurriedly trying to dredge up memories of six years of French to keep up with what Malik was saying.

“The blow to her head is enough to render unconscious but not kill,” Malik hummed before tracing a finger in the air around the ragged edge of one of her sockets. He pointed at a patch of discolored skin on her ribcage. “This woman died of blood loss and shock. Her arms were removed by holding a foot to her ribs and pulling. The bruises from the force would be less significant if her heart had stopped pumping before this.”

Sam was whirling, both from the sheer amount of piecing together his brain had to do and from what he understood must've happened. He turned his attention to Altaïr. “Is he joking?”

Altaïr shrugged. “I told you, I do not speak French. But Malik doesn't joke often, so probably not.”

The taller man shook his head in disbelief. “He said she died from blood loss and that her arms were pulled off while she was knocked unconscious. That's more than the coroners here could come up with.”

“Oh. Then no, he isn't joking. He's completely correct.”

Dean’s eyebrows lowered and he looked between the lot of them. “Excuse me, what? Since when were you such experts on dead bodies?” He waved a finger indicating Malik and Altaïr.

Altaïr thought about what lie he could use, and then what the consequences might be of revealing that part of their identity. They were far enough in the future that their immediate enemies were all dead, and although the Templars might still be around neither Sam nor Dean showed signs of being one. Besides, the boys seemed to want to keep their own profession a secret from civilians.

“We are assassins. It is our job to know how to disarm and kill people. You tend to pick up a few things after doing it enough.”

Dean huffed then leaned forward, chuckling in amusement. “Sorry, I thought you just said you were assassins.”

Malik stood up, recognizing one of the words being tossed around. “You told them about us?” he directed at Altaïr in Arabic. Altaïr put up a hand, knowing his companion was ready to chew him out for revealing them.

“Malik, we are 800 years in the future. I do not think they are going to go around telling all of Syria.”

Malik huffed. He was stopped from ranting and scolding by Sam adding in his two cents. “You know, that really explains all the weapons they had.”

"No way. Assassins? Pfft." Dean rolled his eyes. It sounded silly. Assassins were in movies or out plotting to kill some politician or something. Then again...

Altaïr crossed his arms. "You can choose whether or not to believe me. It doesn't really matter."

Dean ran a scrutinizing eye over the two, reevaluating his initial impression. Sam shrugged as he covered the body back up and tried to bring them back on track. “Alright. So Margaret was attacked, knocked unconscious, and then her attacker decided to rip her arms out. Then they shoved her body in the freezer and cleaned up the blood.”

“That’s very polite of them,” Dean chimed in, scoffing. Altaïr gave him a funny look.

“Whoever did this had to have some serious strength, but I can’t really think of any monster that would take just the arms,” Sam said, heading out of the room. The others trailed after him like ducklings.

“Yeah, me neither,” Dean said. "Unless it wanted a snack."

Altaïr gazed at the ugly green walls of the hallway leading back to the front of the morgue. “Perhaps it did not take the arms to consume them, then? If there was indeed no one around that night, then it would logically either have eaten more of the body but stopped for some reason, or it does not eat humans and had an alternative reason for taking the arms.”

Sam peered over his shoulder at him. “You’re right. I definitely don’t think the monster was interrupted in eating.”

“Yeah, the place was spotless,” Dean chipped in. “If someone was coming it wouldn’t have had time to clean all the blood up. Can’t be any type of bloodsucker either; no puncture marks. Plus why take the arms while she was still kicking? It’d be a lot less messy to drain her then take them.”

They came upon the front entrance where a cop was talking to the secretary. Dean eyed him then clapped his hands. “Well, let’s swing by the police station and pick up the security tape, then head back to the room for some popcorn and hours of fun.”

“What is he yapping about?” Malik groaned, sensing trouble.

“I have no idea,” Altaïr answered honestly. “But I don’t think we will be able to leave any time soon.”

Malik ran a hand down his face, exasperated. It was like dealing with two Altaïrs but four times the trouble.

--

“Explain it to me again, but in simpler terms.” Malik was poised behind Sam’s chair, eyes glued to the screen of his laptop. While Dean was out they had gathered around the wooden table against the wall, bunched close together to get a good view of the footage. The blinds were closed and the lights turned on to combat the dimming afternoon sunlight. Altaïr and Malik refused to sit when offered the only other chair, so they ended up practically breathing down Sam’s neck.

He ran a hand through his hair, trying to think of how to shorten the explanation and translate it. The gap between his classes and now did nothing to help, nor did Malik's very old fashioned way of speaking. “The camera takes a lot of images that look like they are moving when you flip through them fast enough. It sends those images to a receiving machine at the security desk, where the officers can watch the images play on screens. It is also recorded in their machines, and they put it onto this disk so the police can watch it, too.”

Altaïr crossed his arms. “I don’t get it. How does this work again?”

Sam threw up his arms, causing the two to jump back. “How about we just watch the video?” he asked, clearly at his wit’s end. “Yes? Oui. Okay.” He slumped down into his chair, folding his arms across his chest. It wasn’t as if going through hours of footage was fun, but being pestered about what was what and how it worked about things he didn’t even think about was starting to draw his patience thin. He could’ve sworn Altaïr was doing a lot of it on purpose too, because he’d get this barest hint of a smirk every time Sam felt like this was totally something they had 800 years ago. Not to mention he would refuse to translate for Malik, claiming he doesn’t know what those words would be in Arabic since they weren’t invented yet and Sam would have to run through the whole explanation again in a language he was only now recollecting.

There was a jingle of keys and the door to the room opened. “Hey, I got grub,” Dean greeted, raising a hand to show a flat box and a bag around his wrist. He stuffed his key back into his pocket and kicked the door shut behind him.

“Pizza?” Sam raised an eyebrow as he scooted his computer closer to make room for the food.

Dean plopped himself on the edge of his bed and pulled out a stack of paper plates from the grocery bag before tearing the plastic off. “Yeah. Problem?”

“No, it’s just… we’ve had pizza the last four nights in a row. I thought you wanted Chinese?”

Dean looked up briefly then dug around for the napkins he’d bought. “Well, I thought about that, But you know it’s such a hassle to use chopsticks, and not everyone uses forks. Then I was gonna go for Thai, but then I thought that’s a little more east than I was in the mood to eat. I tried looking for some Middle Eastern restaurant, couldn’t find one. I went to the grocery store and looked around, then realized I know diddly squat about cooking Middle Eastern food. I thought about burgers but I don't know how well that'd go over, so I had to think of something that was quick and easy to eat. Phoned in a pizza, picked up a couple beers, and here we are. Now stop being picky and eat.”

Sam absorbed his rambling and a smile graced his face when he understood what he really meant. Dean was trying to be considerate of their guests, even down to thinking how Malik would eat something with one hand. He had settled for something that didn’t require any utensils or special knowledge of how to eat it. “Better watch out, your soft side is showing,” Sam clucked teasingly as took out a few beers to pop the caps off.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Dean started handing out plates with pizza slices on them, which the assassins accepted trepidatiously. He dug into his food right away but Sam noticed him carefully observing the other two out of the corner of his eye.

They watched how Dean ate it with a grim sort of curiosity, already not thrilled by the grease dripping off of the warm triangles and staining their plates. After seeing him swallow and not die, the two inspected their own slices. Altaïr gave his a sniff and found it not entirely disagreeable. He took a small bite, his face twisting and contorting into ridiculous expressions as he chewed.

“This is disgusting,” he said before taking another bite.

Malik rolled his eyes and sat down at the table. “You’re hopeless, you know that?” He frowned down at his pizza, but followed Altaïr’s example and tried a small bite of the cheesy stuff.

“Yes, but you love me for it anyway.”

Malik nearly choked. “How many times have I told you not to say-”

“Relax, relax. They can’t understand what we’re saying. Besides you only said I could not say these things in public and we are clearly not in public.”

“Why is it important that they do not know?”

Everyone in the room jumped at the unexpected voice. In the middle of the room stood Castiel, messy hair in the exact same condition it had been when he left. For some reason he smelled of burning wood and tacos, although nothing visibly suggested why. He glanced around at all the eyes staring bugged out at him.

Dean was the first to recover. “Cas. What’s up?”

“I believe I might have found something regarding our time travel problem.”

The Winchesters sat forward while Altaïr glanced nervously at Malik.

“I asked around and got a list of the objects not locked up in Heaven. It was… difficult, since not many angels had something to do with that mission, and even fewer were in a chatty mood. That is the proper use of that expression, isn’t it?” Not waiting for an answer Cas produced a paper from his trench coat pocket. “As a result the list is likely incomplete. But what is on there comes from reliable sources.”

He handed it to Dean, who set it aside. “Wanna stay for a beer?”

He knew the answer as soon as he saw Cas slip into the apologetic expression he’d been wearing a lot lately. “Yeah, angel stuff. Right. Sorry I asked.” He knocked back a gulp of his beer.

“Dean, I-”

“Nah, it’s cool Cas. I know you’re busy getting your misfits in order. You should be helping them. We’re okay here.” He was clearly not okay with this.

Cas fidgeted uncomfortably, but nodded. With a flutter of invisible feathers he was gone, leaving a bitter taste in his wake.

Chapter Text

Heaving a heavy sigh, Sam closed his laptop. It was well past four in the morning and his vision was growing cross-eyed. The only light in the room came from a very dim yellow lamp on the bedside table and streaks of moonlight filtering past the heavy blinds. Altaïr and Malik had passed out on his bed after a lengthy conversation. Dean was sitting quietly in the dark, milking the last beer for as long as he could make it last.

He looked up at the noise and checked his watch. "Find anything?"

"No," Sam answered, keeping his voice quiet. "Nothing abnormal happened before her death, nothing after. Peter was the last one to leave the room, excluding a night janitor who went into the back shortly after he left. No anomalies, static, or even a flash of the eyes. It really doesn't help for them to not have a camera pointed at the freezers."

Dean raised his eyebrows. "Yeah, well, they don't exactly expect the dead to start walking."

Sam bobbed his head in agreement.

"So." Dean threw back the last of his beer and stood up. "This means that the killer was someone already there. Since Peter was the last one to see her alive, it was either him, the janitor, or someone hiding who could've come in a different way."

Sam leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms behind his head as he watched Dean start to pace. "Yeah. Think we should go check out what the janitor has to say?"

"Sure, but one problem. Now we have this to deal with." Dean reached into his pocket and set a crinkled piece of paper in front of his brother. In the dim light of the musty hotel room it was hard to make out the words scrawled on the paper.

"The time travel objects?" Sam guessed.

"Yeah. We still gotta work on getting those two lame brains home." Dean ceased his pacing in favor of reclining in the chair opposite Sam. He started fiddling with the rim of his empty beer bottle, producing hollow noises whenever he ran his thumb over the top.

Sam rubbed his eyes. "Tomorrow we can split up, each take one of them with us. I'll do research, find out where these things were last seen. You can interview the janitor."

Dean eyed him while turning the suggestion over in his head. "I guess. You need some sleep. Go on, take my bed."

Sam yawned and nodded, too tired to argue, and trudged over before flopping onto the creaky mattress. He hadn't even bothered to take his shoes off, just maneuvered his head till it was comfortable and immediately dozed off. Dean looked on in amusement, but quickly fell back into messing with his bottle.

He mulled over their situation. It wasn’t the first time they tackled two cases at once, but it did make things significantly more difficult. He personally thought it would be best to ditch the time travelers first before trying to solve the other case. Though, considering the only detriment they were being was an extra set of mouths to feed and the other case had a dead body, he would at least attempt not to complain about keeping them around. Too much, anyway.

Dean stared blankly at the brown glass in his hands. Things would be much easier with Cas here. Cas could translate everything for them, and who better to teach them about their world than an angel who had been thrust to earth and forced to learn about how the world worked as well? Although he was still very awkward and had a lot to learn. Sure, he understood many pop culture references now, which made things easier, but he was just grasping how to use them, and as charming as he was, social interaction was a challenge. Yet here he was, attempting to teach an entire race of heavenly beings the things he had learned. It was not a task Dean envied.

"You are concerned about the angel, right?" Altaïr whispered.

Dean nearly dropped his bottle. He couldn't see Altaïr's face in the darkened light of the room, but he could feel him staring at him from the bed. "Figures one of you would still be awake," he chuckled quietly. "What, don't you trust us?"

"No."

The answer was so straightforward Dean sat rigid for a solid moment. He put the bottle on the table but kept his fist tight around it. "Why not?"

The thin outline of shoulders rose and fell in the dark. "Would you?"

"…Fair enough."

The silence between them stretched, daring each other to talk first but not speaking in fear of disturbing the soft sleepers. "You did not tell me if I guessed correctly," Altaïr finally mumbled. "Though I am fairly certain of the answer."

Dean had to think back for a second. "What, me? Worried about Cas? Of course I am. He's a close friend."

Altaïr hummed noncommittally.

"It's true. Wouldn't you be worried if your pal there had a job forced on him that he didn't want and he was expected to lead a bunch of desperate followers into a war that wasn't supposed to happen?"

Altaïr glanced down at Malik beside him, who had curled up with the pillow under his head. "I hope it doesn't come to that, but yes, I would be worried. For many reasons." He mulled over the morbid possibility of Malik having to take control of the brotherhood and go against the creed in an all out war. It would spell disaster for everyone. He would prefer to be at the side of his best friend, his second-in-command, and most trusted advisor in such times. Malik made things go smoothly in a way Altaïr struggled with; he had the respect that Altaïr was still gaining back from those that had trouble letting go of the childish brute he used to be. Chasing the thoughts away before they could turn any darker or dig up memories that he had tried never to dwell on, he looked back at Dean. "Your angel is in a war?"

"Yeah. It's… kind of a long story." Dean scratched the back of his head, settling down further into his chair. "The angels were, uh, cast out of Heaven and now they're all fighting against each other and the asshole who shut them out in the first place. Cas blames himself for the whole thing even though he was tricked into helping the asshole." He worried his lip between his teeth, still feeling the empathy and anger at Cas's situation. It wasn't his fault at all. He had been trying to lock the angels in Heaven, forcing them to work out their differences and stop all the infighting. He thought he was doing good by teaming up with that dick of an angel and casting the spell to seal them up. He had no way of knowing the guy had other, selfish intentions, or that the spell was actually for forcing all of the angels - his family - to fall to Earth.

Altaïr thought on that for a moment. "Sounds like a monumental problem."

"Tell me about it."

"You are not helping? Even though you are close friends?"

Dean picked up the bottle still in his grip and slammed it on the table, then flinched as he remembered the sleeping comrades. "I try helping," he hissed. "Me and Sammy both." He grit his teeth and clenched his fist against his knee, taking a breath to try and calm down. He rubbed his forearm, feeling the scar there throb with his anger. The mark that proved he was helping in his own way. Now was not the time to be going into a fury, however. "There's not much we can do at the moment, even if we want to. Like I said, it's an angel war, and so far Cas is the only one not being a douche about us being around."

"A douche?" Altaïr asked.

Dean pinched his brow between his fingers. He forgot he was talking to someone who, despite his convincing speech, did not know the lingo of this time. "It's an insult, okay? They're… being extremely rude for no reason. The rule still holds: All angels are assholes."

Altaïr couldn't help but smirk at his blasphemous way of talking. It was a refreshing sentiment. "Even Castiel?"

Dean kept his hand over his eyes, but still looked at the rug with sudden interest. "Well… I mean… Sometimes. For the most part not really. He's just… Quirky."

A knowing grin spread across Altaïr's face, although Dean could not see it. "I see."

Dean glanced up; he could tell by the tone of his voice that that was a loaded sentence. "What do you mean 'you see'? Hey, don't you turn away! We were in the middle of a conversation. Stop ignoring me! I know you're not sleeping!"

--

“Pro… meth-ous?”

“Prometheus,” Sam supplied.

“Hm.”

Sam typed another keyword into his search bar and hit enter. Malik sat beside him, idly flipping through the thick books that were stacked on the library table.

“Imprisonment?”

“Yes. Emprisonnement.”

Somehow their research session had turned into an impromptu English lesson. Mostly due to Malik’s boredom. He had been displeased to learn that he and Altaïr would be splitting up between the brothers, and even more so when he realized he would have to sit uselessly off to the side while Sam poured through tomes and websites looking for any hint of the objects that could have brought them here. While he was thinking of somehow sabotaging Sam’s research should he get close to figuring out about the Apple, he knew that would be pointless since he couldn’t understand any of the writing. So after roughly three minutes of stewing in his mind, Malik picked up a book and attempted to pronounce the title from what he knew of French. He was way off, but Sam corrected him without any air of superiority and seemed not to mind helping. He even went so far as to supply the French equivalent for the words he knew, which Malik was quick to pick up on. Eventually the two relaxed into a session of questions and answers. Between some cognates and Sam's rough translations, Malik was starting to pick up on the story.

“Why is Prometheus the creator of man? I thought gods usually did that in religion.”

Sam shifted in his seat. “Well, according to that myth it was Prometheus. Zeus did curse him for bringing fire to man, though. Every day he would die and the next morning he would come back to life only to die again.”

Malik furrowed his eyebrows at the book. “This Zeus sounds like a harsh god.”

“Yes, he was quite a dick,” Sam snorted, recalling the cruel grin of the bearded old man. That had been an… interesting case. Meeting Prometheus, Artemis, and Zeus all together was intense and painful. They were getting a little less surprised each god or legendary figure they encountered, although the fear of their power didn't lessen one bit.

Assuming he meant the way Zeus acted in the story, Malik hummed in agreement to Sam’s comment and continued reading in silence.

As Sam scrolled through another website, he couldn’t help but voice what he had been thinking since Malik first casually asked him about the Greek gods. “Hey, uh, Malik. I have to ask, why are you so calm about this?”

Malik raised an eyebrow, placing a hand over the book of mythologies. “Calm about what?”

“All of the myths and angels and stuff. Most of them are real.” Sam fished for the right words. He was genuinely curious. “Aren’t you, I don’t know, shocked or offended?”

“Ah. Not really.” Malik looked down at his hand, a corner of his mouth twisting up. He spoke slowly and clearly for Sam to understand. “I’ve always been a skeptic of many things. Even now I am not entirely convinced this is not a dream. Finding out the stories that I have known my entire life might actually have some truth is… a lot for the mind. Finding out other religions and stories might also hold bits of truth makes it a bit more convincing somehow. I always thought it interesting, the various legends of the world and how many of them overlapped, albeit only if you don't have the stubborn refusal to listen to them. It would make more sense for such famous tales to have stemmed from a common truth.”

Sam chuckled. "I didn't understand most of that, but I think I get what you're saying."

Malik simply smiled and went back to his book.

Malik wasn't nearly as bad as Altaïr to be around. His counterpart seemed to have a mischievous streak to him, purposely aggravating the brothers, while Malik was more level-headed if a tad intolerant of idiocy. Bobby would have liked him, Sam thought with a twinge of sadness.

Trying to shake off the feeling, he focused on the screen in front of him. So far he managed to cross off a good portion of the list of possible time-traveling objects. He was on to a camera: an old, bulky thing that looked like little more than a black box with a lens. Apparently whomever was photographed by it would be whisked away to another time. When exactly the person would go was wildly unpredictable, so getting back was nearly impossible to control. Currently it was being kept in a museum. Although cameras like these weren’t invented until long after Malik’s time, there was the possibility someone managed to bring it with them when taking a picture and flung it into the past.

Sam angled his laptop towards Malik. “Do you recognize this?”

Malik tilted his head, squinting his eyes at the picture. He shook his head. “No. What is that?”

Turning his computer back towards himself, Sam frowned. “It’s a camera. This one is supposed to transport people in time when it takes a picture.”

“Camera?” Malik’s brow furrowed. “Like the ones in that place for dead people?”

“Not quite. It only takes one picture when you press a button.” Sam picked up his pen and scratched out the name from the list. They were slowly whittling their way down to a small handful of items. “A pocketwatch last seen in 1902, an old inn that disappears without a trace, some sort of apple, a plane that- hm, that one seems more like a ghost thing… and a strange staff.” He checked his watch before folding the piece of paper and tucking it in his pocket. He shut down his laptop and stood to gather the books.

Malik looked up questioningly.

“Dean should be done with his interview. We’re going to get lunch,” Sam stated.

--

Dean and Altaïr climbed out of the Impala after parking in front of a small apartment building. There were a couple of kids playing on a rickety swing out front, which Altaïr stared at curiously as they made their way into the yellow-paneled building. They went up to the second floor and knocked on one of the two doors on the landing. After a shout came from inside there was the clicking of a lock and the door opened to reveal a stout black-haired man with a thick mustache.

“Hi. Are you Mr. Donno?” Dean asked, reaching into his navy suit jacket. The man eyed the two of them warily but nodded. Flipping open his fake badge, Dean showed it to the man. “I’m Agent Smitty, this is my colleague Agent Cockburn. We’re with the FBI. We wanted to ask you some questions about the Margaret Goldman case.”

Mr. Donno’s eyes widened. “Sure, of course. Come in.” He backed away, shutting the door behind the two ‘agents’. The room was modest and homey, though very over-packed by knick-knacks. Several small porcelain puppies stared down at them with dark, sad eyes as they shuffled over to the worn out couch. Dean took a seat next to Mr. Donno while Altaïr stubbornly refused to sit down, instead standing behind Dean and glaring at the shelves of tiny figurines. Their host seemed to sense their discomfort and smiled shakily. “My wife likes to collect them. The house is filled with these things.”

Dean nodded as if he sympathized, but he was too creeped out to put much effort into it. “Right. About the incident, Mr. Donno. The night Ms. Goldman disappeared, what exactly happened?”

He sighed. “I went into work, everything was normal. It was a normal shift. She stays there most nights so I wasn’t surprised to see the lights on in the back. I went about cleaning the front room, which I normally do so I’m not in her way. About fifteen minutes after my shift started the twiggy guy…” He rolled his hand in thought, searching for his name. “Mr. Korey I think? He came out of the back carrying his bag. I don’t normally see anyone else during my hours, so I asked what he was doing. He said he just got yelled at by Ms. Goldman. The guy was all sweaty, so it must have been one hell of an ass-chewing.”

Altaïr raised an eyebrow. He was about to ask what the phrase meant when Dean cleared his throat. “I see. Was there anything else odd about him? Any weird smells or something out of place?”

“Smells?” Mr. Donno cocked his head, brow furrowing. “Er, no, not really. I couldn’t smell anything besides my cleaners. Years of being around that stuff will kill your nose, you know.”

“Okay. So what did Mr. Korey do then?”

Mr. Donno shrugged. “Nothing. He wished me a good night and he left.”

Dean clasped his hands together. “Are you sure you didn’t see anything else? Hear any weird noises? Feel any cold spots maybe?”

Frowning deeply, Mr. Donno narrowed suspicious eyes. “Agent Smitty, I don’t see how that-”

“Just answer the question,” Altaïr piped up. Mr. Donno seemed startled, as if he’d forgotten the other man was there.

“N-no. I didn’t see anything weird. When Mr. Korey left I finished the front and went to the closet to get a new jug of bleach. I cleaned out the back and noticed Ms. Goldman wasn’t there, but I thought she was in her office or the bathroom. Her things were still there so I figured she hadn’t left.”

Dean bit his lip in frustration. They weren’t getting any new information. “Was there anything off about your routine maybe?” he tried. “Something that was different?”

Mr. Donno looked away, furrowing his brows. “I’m not sure how this is helpful to your investigation, Agent Smitty. I’m just the janitor. I didn’t see anything or even find poor Ms. Goldman in the… God she could have been…” He put his face in his hands and took a deep breath. Dean reached out to him but Mr. Donno held up his hand. “No, I’m fine. It’s fine.” He let out the breath and shrugged his shoulders. “I’ve told you everything. There was nothing that I noticed.”

Pressing his mouth in a thin line, Dean nodded. “Sorry. Thank you for your time.” With that he stood up and motioned to Altaïr to follow him out of the apartment.

--

Malik picked at the greasy basket of fries in front of him. He had yet to come across a food in this time period that he found delicious. Everything so far was too greasy or too sweet. Sam had tried getting him to eat some of his 'granola bars' which seemed alright, but they were unpleasantly sticky. The dark bubbly drink Sam called soda didn't look too bad at first, either, but it too was on the sweet side. They got him a water instead, which he felt was a waste of a drink, even if it was gross, and a salad which he ate in no time. Now he was hungry again and contemplating getting into Altaïr's food, despite his fellow assassin's love for the sugar-rich substances.

Altaïr wasn't guarding his food too carefully and didn't mind Malik taking any in the first place. He was mostly interested in the brainstorming going on at the table.

"She had beef with Ms. Goldman. Maybe she got sick of her treatment, snuck in after Peter left and attacked her. She seemed much less sincere than him when we questioned her. Anybody can fake a cry," Sam was pointing out.

"So what? She wasn't exactly buddies with the old lady, of course she's not gonna be as torn up as someone who was close with her. It can't be the hot assistant chick. I'm pretty sure it's that Peter guy. He was the last one to see her alive, plus when the janitor went into the office after their 'argument'," Dean raised two fingers and bent them in honest-to-god air quotes, "he didn't see or hear her anywhere. Not to mention he seemed pretty eager to point out Holly and Ms. Goldman didn't get along."

"Okay, fine. Let's say it is Peter. He doesn't have much motive but something could have happened. Maybe Goldman was gonna fire him."

"Which, given that sweaty little mole's track record, would probably put him out of a job for good," Dean continues. "That could have been what the argument was about. So he kills her to keep from losing his job and stuffs her in the freezer before the janitor can come in and see what happened."

Sam nodded his head once, raising his brows. "It's possible. Now, I'm glad we narrowed down the who, but did you get any clues as to a what?"

Dean took a bite out of his burger and shook his head. He chewed and swallowed before saying "no idea. Maybe something that would benefit from a job at the morgue? It would make sense, but there are still plenty of monsters that fit the bill. Too little info right now. How 'bout you? How did your time travel search go?"

Sam let out a defeated breath of air. "Nothing. There's still a few items on the list, but so far nada."

"Damn it," Dean muttered.

Sam shrugged. "Like you say, we've done more with less."

"This seems to be one of the 'less' moments," Altaïr chipped in.

Dean gave him a withering glare. "Thanks for your helpful input."

Altaïr shrugged innocently and sipped on his diet coke; even though he liked the sweet things he still preferred the sugar a little toned down. "If you suspect it is this Peter person why not follow him? If he gives away some hint to what kind of monster he is you'll know how to defeat him, correct?"

"Yeah, I was just about to suggest that," Dean griped. Altaïr smirked. "Smartass."

"My ass does not possess intelligence, and I would be worried if it did." Oh but he clearly knew what the insult meant.

"Can I punch him, Sammy? Please tell me I can punch him."

"Not in the restaurant," Sam chided, gathering the food wrappers and trash onto his tray.

Malik was more or less lost but recognized Altaïr being a jerk no matter the language. "If you end up getting poisoned or smothered in your sleep, I am taking your stuff."

Altaïr stuck out his bottom lip. "Come on."

"You brought it on yourself," Malik stated, taking a fry before placing the paper dish on Sam's trash pile as he passed. He popped it in his mouth with a disinterested expression.

Dean stood up and stretched while Sam took care of their waste. "I haven't had any action in weeks. A bit of sparring might actually do some good."

Altaïr looked up at him, a wicked grin falling into place. "You wish to spar?" He turned to Malik. "He wishes to spar."

Malik snorted but refrained from commenting.

"Hey I can put up a helluva fight," Dean said indignantly to the two of them. "I wanna see what the two of you so-called 'assassins' are made of."

"Really? What about the case?" Sam asked, returning to the table. He was ignored. The others stood up and the group made their way out of the restaurant. "Is fighting really gonna help anything?"

Dean waved his arm as if to indicate there was nothing in front of them. "We're practically at a dead end. The only leads we have are a couple of maybe theories, an incomplete list, and Peter Korey, who is currently at work right now where we'd stick out like a sore thumb if we tailed him. We might as well pass the time."

Sam mentally groaned as they got into the car. He felt like they were going to regret this, but maybe they needed this to clear the air. He just hoped it didn't end in things getting any worse.

Chapter Text

Blowing air past his lips, Malik leaned against the metal fence and thought of everything he could be doing instead of watching what was essentially a cockfight between his bull-headed best friend and a stranger with just as thick of a skull. This was not looking for the Apple, which was something they really needed to do. Perhaps if they knocked the Winchesters unconscious they could finally slip away...

Altaïr stood on one side of the bare patch of dirt, a smug smirk plastered on his face. His hood was still up, but it was much more revealing than the one he had when he first appeared in the future. Dean could see the glint of his almost golden eyes when he sized him up. It dropped any pretense of being friendly from his mind and he eased into the cold calculations of battle-mode. Altaïr was shorter than him, probably a little lighter, but quicker. His arms were more muscled, evident even under the clothing, and he had strong, worn hands that were exposed as they both took off their weapons. His left hand was missing its ring finger, Dean noted curiously, but he didn't mention it. There was a bracer on that arm with some sort of metal workings on the underside. Altaïr refused to take it off, although he promised not to use it. Dean wasn't entirely sure they could trust them yet, but he was too pumped to finally punch that smug smirk off of that teasing asshole's face to argue. Besides, he kept at least one knife tucked into his boot just in case things went sour.

Sam joined Malik against the fence, sighing heavily. "This is pointless," he muttered. Malik raised an eyebrow but continued looking on as the two stripped off their outer jackets and threw them on the nearest picnic table. Being on the cusp of snowing temperatures, the local playground was fairly abandoned. Only the kids most determined to drag their guardians outside so they could have one last romp on the cold metal castle and frosted wood chips were there, as well as some hunched guy in grey idly taking up a swing, and they paid little attention to the gaggle of grown men.

Altaïr and Dean were leaning forward, knees bent and arms up and ready to hit or block the other. Dancing forward, Dean threw a test punch which Altaïr easily avoided by sliding back. The hunter followed up with a quick right uppercut that Altaïr blocked with his arm. He let Dean throw a couple more punches and a kick, bouncing just out of range, before he shoved Dean's raised fists aside with one arm and landed a punch to Dean's shoulder with the other.

Smirking, Dean rolled back on his heels and came at him with a rapid combo of jabs, the last one managing to hit Altaïr square in the chest. "Hah. So you're not untouchable."

"Rest assured that was just to let you think it was possible," Altaïr taunted.

A dip in the fence alerted the two leaning against it to a new presence. "What is going on here?" Castiel asked in his gravelly voice.

"Cas? What are you doing here?" Sam questioned the angel, confusion furrowing his brow.

Castiel slipped his hands into his pockets and squinted at the brawlers. "I needed a break. Hannah is in charge temporarily. She seems better at dealing with the others than I am. Why are they fighting?"

“Ah.” Sam lifted his shoulders and rolled his eyes. “Well, Altaïr and Dean were being jerks to each other on purpose, so they’re sparring their feelings out.”

Cas nodded in understanding. “No chick flick moments,” he quoted.

The conversation seemed to have drawn attention as Dean glanced over, pausing mid-step to make sure that yes, the angel was indeed standing there. He opened his mouth to say something when Altaïr’s fist connected with his jaw. Dean reeled back, stars swarming his vision, and the assassin took advantage of the moment to bring his knee up sharply into Dean’s stomach and push him backwards, the two tumbling down and landing on the compact dirt with a thud. Dean winced as Altaïr’s weight pressed down on him through the concentrated area of the leg on his abdomen. He tapped his opponent, wheezing out “get up.” Altaïr complied, rising up with a grin, and held a hand out to help Dean up.

The older Winchester regarded it for a moment before ignoring the hand and standing up on his own. “Best two out of three. I got distracted,” he declared, rubbing his stomach.

Altaïr shook his head. “You shouldn’t let anything distract you. What kind of fighter allows themselves to get thrown off by a friendly presence? Novice.”

“You’re one to talk,” Malik chided. Altaïr scrunched up his eyebrows as a hint of red tinted his face.

“Either way, I would rather fight you when you’re not so distracted. Let me take on the big one,” Altaïr said, motioning at the younger brother.

Sam’s eyes widened and he pointed at himself. “Me? Really? Um. Okay.”

Dean walked over, slightly hunched, and slapped Sam on the back. “C’mon, Sammy. I’d love to see you wipe that shit-eating grin right off of his face.”

Sam rubbed his hands together and stepped forward, allowing Dean to take his place. He wasn’t exactly opposed to the idea (Altaïr had been getting on his nerves pretending not to know things just to make Sam’s translating life harder), it was just unexpected. He at least wouldn’t get careless over a pair of blue eyes like a certain brother he knew.

Everyone was a little surprised, however, when Malik stood up as well and put his hand against Altaïr’s chest. Altaïr tilted his head in question. “I wish to fight Sam instead,” he announced in French. Then he smiled, and to his partner in Arabic: “I can’t let you have all the fun.”

Altaïr returned the smile and patted his shoulder, going over to the fence. “Sure, sure. Just go easy on him, King of Swords.”

Dean gave Altaïr a raised eyebrow as the three settled against the wire mesh. “What, too scared to fight my little bro so you have your friend fight him instead? Or did you think Sam would go easier on him?”

Altaïr shot an icy glare at the hunter. “Honestly I would be more worried about your brother at the moment. Malik and I have fought each other our entire lives and he is perhaps even harder to defeat now than ever.” It was a bit of an exaggeration, but not much of one. Malik worked hard for everything that came oh so easily to the gifted boy that rose through the ranks quicker than any assassin before him. All throughout training Malik was the most antagonistic towards Altaïr, and his hatred and jealousy fueled rather than stunted his learning. The dark eyed fellow novice was the toughest and most enthusiastic opponent for Altaïr to face, which made him eager to do combat with him, even if it meant instigating him.

Dean rolled his eyes at the dramatics. He rubbed his jaw, which he was pretty sure was forming a bruise, and watched the scene before him intensely.

Malik and Sam bent their knees, slipping into a similar stance the other two had taken on. There was much less posturing than the previous fight, and an understanding that this was much friendlier. Each of them kept an eye on where the other might strike from, how far they would have to go, and how best to use the height difference. Sam suddenly stepped forward just into arm’s reach and threw an uppercut with his right, then jabbed with his left. Malik turned to the side and ducked forward, causing the second punch to hit his back, and hooked his right arm around Sam’s left and under his shoulder, effectively locking the arm in place and pulling Sam down. Instinctively Sam grabbed at the front of Malik’s clothes to try and push him off, at which point Malik pivoted forward, leading with his hip, and turned his body until Sam found himself looking up at the gray sky and his head stinging from impacting the ground.

Altaïr suppressed a chuckle. “Looks like we both got you on your backs. That is what you get for facing someone who has trained many years for this.”

Dean crossed his arms, frowning profusely.

Sam got up and brushed the dirt off of the back of his pants. “Ah, I should have seen that one coming. You’re really good.”

“As are you. You know how to use your height to your advantage.” Malik smiled amicably. Sam felt a twinge of pride at the compliment. It was coming from someone who had presumably been taught their entire life to specifically take down other people, whereas he learned to scrap from his father and brother off and on while they lived on the road. They had different fighting styles and different targets, but his skill level was sufficient.

“Alright, stop makin’ friendly with each other before I die of emotion.” Dean jerked his thumb back towards the unofficial sidelines. “I get to take the next one.”

Sam let out an exasperated sigh, but left him to fight the one-armed man nonetheless. Malik didn’t seem winded at all from his fight- if it could be called that- and eased right back into the starting position. Dean rolled his shoulders and did the same, raising his arms up near his face like a boxer. Now that he saw how easily Malik could flip him, Dean was prepared to work around that. He would have to avoid letting his left arm get too far from his body lest Malik hook it like he did Sam’s. He probably wouldn’t have to worry about the right side, however, since the flip looked like it only worked over the same side, not across. All he had to do was target Malik’s weak side and defend against the other arm when necessary.

They carefully shuffled in a circle, trying to get the angle on the other. Malik shifted closer, hoping to get in below Dean’s longer arms and threw a punch at his side. Dean took the impact, using it as an opening and jabbed at Malik’s left side. Malik had clearly expected him to avoid the side with his stump of an arm, as Sam had done, since he didn’t move to evade the attack. He backed up, shifting gears to account for the new information.

Malik weaved in again, Dean getting in two quick jabs before Malik managed to elbow him in the nose. Despite being put off by the hit, Dean swung at Malik’s head, which Malik dodged. He moved out of the way and avoided a sloppy swipe again at his left. So Dean was specifically targeting Malik’s weaker side. He could work with that.

Meanwhile Dean considered bum-rushing Malik, but he felt Malik would easily avoid it and it would put Dean off balance. Malik kept getting close to negate his reach but Dean was landing more hits. He decided to use that strategy as he circled closer.

The three on the fence watched fixedly. Sam chewed his lip anxiously. He didn’t know who he was hoping would come out on top; Dean was his brother, but Malik wasn’t bad at all. He would almost consider him a friend at this point, if not for the fact that he hardly knew a thing about him. He could see that Malik used people’s behavior to his advantage, particularly around his handicap. Judging by how he maneuvered, though, he didn’t consider it something that should stop him from accomplishing tasks, even outside of fighting. He simply adjusted for it. It made Sam wonder what happened to Malik’s arm, if he even had one before.

Cas was following Dean’s movements without blinking. He was enraptured by the man in action, the way his body swayed and rippled with each jab and roll of his feet. He saw where Dean could improve, and where he already had. Cas had expected the exact opposite of this to happen, though; Dean’s fight would be short and direct while Sam’s would be full of planning and changing as the fight dragged out. It was part of their style. He frowned at the blow to Dean’s nose, wondering if it would cause any bleeding (which of course he would heal).

Regardless, the fight was drawing to a close all the same. He could sense it. Castiel found himself clenching his hands into fists, and almost inaudibly he murmured “go Dean.”

Malik lashed out with a kick to Dean’s leading knee, making him wobble but he still stood straight. Dean tried to get close but again Malik cuffed the same leg. Frustrated, Dean quickly moved forward and to the side, angling himself toward Malik’s left. Malik let him and moved past him, kicking hard at Dean’s ankle. This left the hunter suddenly falling with his momentum. He tried to catch his balance but Malik slammed into him, making him stumble and drop to his knees. Malik huffed and waited to see what Dean would do next.

Technically they never made it a rule that the opponent had to be on the ground for the fight to be over, and Dean wasn’t fully on the ground either. But he stayed put and waved off Malik, shaking his head to signal that he was done. Malik took the victory with a nod and went to the fence. Hesitant, Altaïr leaned forward.

“Are you up for a rematch with me? Or has Malik beaten the fight out of you already?”

Dean put a hand on his leg and let out a short chuckle. “You guys weren’t kidding when you said you were assassins, huh?” He slowly got up and stretched his back. “Yeah, I’ll take you on. It’s nothing to complain about.”

Altaïr smirked and the two moved a few paces away before turning their steely gazes on each other. They didn’t dance around as much as before, launching straight at one another instead. Very few punches were thrown as Dean tried to get a grip on Altaïr to drag him down. Altaïr scrambled out of Dean’s hold around his shoulder and under his arm, pushing him off. He lashed out to kick Dean and get him off balance, but Dean got closer again and grabbed his leg.

Although he was surprised, Altaïr recovered by leaning forward and bending his knee, forcing more weight on it and freeing himself once more. Dean was pulled downwards before he could let go, so he latched on to Altaïr’s mid section and attempted to drive him back. Altaïr hunched over Dean’s shoulder and grabbed the back of his shirt with one hand and punched him a few times in the ribs with the other. His heels dug into the ground as he tried to push and punch the taller, heavier man away. Dean let out a puff of air but didn’t relent. He was already forcefully sliding the shorter man back, while Altaïr was fighting to keep his footing.

Deciding to risk getting toppled, Altaïr kneed Dean in his still-sore stomach. Dean groaned in pain and flinched. His hold on the assassin loosened, but he was still pushing forward and ended up tipping Altaïr over. He received a foot to the knee and his shirt riding up around his shoulders, but he shot out his hands and stopped himself from falling all the way. His palms were likely scraped from the rough ground but he'd live.

First thing Dean thought was that he'd lost again. Then he noticed that the collar of his shirt was a little too tight.

“Could you stop stretching my clothes please?” Dean huffed out, tapping Altaïr’s hands scrunched in his flannel. Although Altaïr had tried to either stop his fall or bring Dean down with him, he had ended up with his back to the dirt and Dean hunched over him, arms out to either side holding himself up. Technically it was a tie seeing as they were both on the ground, but no rules had been laid out at all, so there were no ‘winners’ in any of these fights.

Altaïr let out a short bark of what turned into laughter. He let go of the hunter and rolled out from underneath him. Dean raised an eyebrow as he sat back on his butt, but found himself cracking a smile. He felt the laughter bubble up from him as well, light and loud. He didn’t know what in the world they were laughing at. The whole thing was very strange and very stupid.

Chapter Text

Peter Korey was a very average middle-aged man. He got off of his afternoon shift at the morgue and went to the local office supply store down the street, where he spent exactly fourteen minutes looking at collectible stamps, humorous birthday cards, and colorful postcards before buying two boxes of staples and a roll of masking tape. He then wandered over to a convenience store across from that and spent three minutes finding a magazine that he purchased with a baggy of change and went outside to lean against the brick wall of the building and read it. Mr. Korey made it all the way to the centerfold before he felt it appropriate to close the shiny pages, check his watch, and head back to the parking lot beside the morgue to enter his green station wagon- complete with wooden side panels- and ease into traffic. He headed home with minimal delay and after he drove up his crunchy gravel driveway the man gathered up his things, briskly walked into his one story home, and promptly locked the door.

This was all obsessively observed by the four men sitting inside a black Impala as they tailed him.

Well, two of the men were attentive anyway. Altaïr and Malik had been interested at first, but after an hour of sitting outside Peter Korey’s house and watching the first stars appear in the inky black sky they decided to turn their attention toward each other and conversed softly in Arabic. The Winchesters didn’t really have a problem with it since they weren’t in danger of their suspect hearing them. Castiel had left shortly after congratulating Dean on his victory, which gave the man mixed feelings of pride and loneliness. To combat it he threw himself into the case, although that quickly proved boring. The brothers began bouncing more theories off of each other, halfheartedly watching the house out the window. They ruled out several more monsters but they still had yet to see Peter do anything indicating he was a monster.

“You know, it could still totally be the janitor,” Sam was saying. “You yourself said his testimony was wishy washy. What better way to get away with a kill than to be the guy who cleans it up?”

Dean nodded. “I see what you’re saying, but what’s the motive? Didn’t like the night owl being around at night?”

Sam shrugged. “She could’ve been mistreating him. Peter and Holly both said Ms. Goldman was stressed, and it certainly seemed like she was willing to take it out on her employees. A janitor definitely would've caught flak.”

“Yeah maybe. He did seem at the mercy of his creepy doll-obsessed missus, too, which would be enough to make anyone snap.” Dean bit his thumb, thinking. “It still bugs me the way she was killed, though. Why not take the whole body? I can understand not wanting to take her out the front past all the cameras, but there’s a backdoor, too. Plus a janitor wouldn’t have trouble getting out through there, or cleaning up any blood afterwards. Why give up a perfectly good meal when it’s sitting in a place no one really goes?”

“Maybe he wasn’t in it for monster reasons?” Sam suggested.

As they discussed the possibilities of witchcraft, the two in the back tried to not make it so obvious what they were plotting.

“-when they sleep?” Altaïr leaned one arm against the back seat and rested his cheek on his hand. “One of them might stay up again. They still do not fully trust us even after today.”

Malik sighed. “I am aware. What if we went early? Sam told me he likes to run in the morning. We could propose to come with him and use it to get out to the forest.”

“And do what when we get out there? Knock him out?” Altaïr asked, already knowing the answer.

Malik furrowed his brows and shook his head at the proposal. “He might tell his brother when he regains consciousness, and there is no guarantee we will find the Apple and get back before they found us.” Out of habit Malik rubbed his left side. It was something he had developed when he lost the ability to cross his arms; he still reached for what was not there, even years after losing the limb. He tried consciously not to do so, but when particularly stressed he slipped. Both of them had somehow allowed themselves to become reluctant to betray the Winchesters. However they also knew that this was more important than a friendship that would be over as soon as they returned to their own time period.

“This will be difficult. There has to be a way we can be assured they both will sleep, or that we can lose them,” Altaïr mumbled, voicing their shared concern. If they had been in Syria, in their time with their tools, this would not be so much of a problem. They had no access to their sleeping drugs or the Brotherhood's network of underlings to distract the Winchesters without raising suspicion. Then again if they had been in Syria then there would be no reason to look for the Apple in the first place. “For now we should just keep an eye out for an opportunity.”

"Trust me, I have been, brother.”

---

Around eight the next morning Peter Korey had still not left his house. There were no blood curdling screams at any point. All of two lights had been turned on over the course of the night and both had been shut off before midnight. The stake-out proved fruitless and the group returned to the motel to rest. With a streak of luck in favor of the assassins, both brothers had passed out within minutes of getting inside the room. Dean had thrown a glance at Altaïr before laying his head on the yellowed pillow, a silent sign that he trusted them not to stab them in the back. It made Altaïr feel a twinge of guilt as he snatched up the keys and slid out the door as soon as he was sure the two were definitely asleep.

Malik started walking towards the exit of the parking lot while Altaïr locked up behind them. The taller man jogged a little to catch up and slipped the keys into the pocket of his jacket, glancing sideways at Malik. They reached the main road and continued walking in silence for awhile before Altaïr became too unnerved to stay quiet. He cleared his throat.

"It seems we’ve misjudged their trust in us.”

“I suppose so.”

“...It’s quite a walk back to the place where we fell.”

“Indeed it is,” Malik said simply.

Altaïr chewed his lip. “They might wake up before we get back.”

“They might.”

A beat of silence.

“This was really risky, Malik.”

Malik slowed his walk and tilted his head down, raising his eyes at his partner. “Thank you for stating the obvious. Anything else you would like to talk about? Perhaps about how you don’t seem to be taking this situation quite so seriously, or about how careless you are being? Maybe it’s the itch of these strange clothes or the impossibility of being here, but I think you are procrastinating going back.” He gestured out at the nothingness on the dark road in front of them. “We have been here for over a full day and are only now looking for the Apple. We should have dispatched of Sam and Dean when they first approached us and immediately gone to look for it. Why pretend to be innocent, hm? For something ‘fun’ to do? Fighting, helping them with their mystery killer, sharing knowledge... what is the point? Why are you not putting every effort into getting back, Altaïr?”

“Yeah, they’re growing on me, too.”

Altaïr glanced at Malik, who only exhaled a ‘tch’ and curled his lip. It made Altaïr smile for a moment. They picked up the pace again, shoving their hands into their pockets. “They were innocents when we met them. We could not kill them then; the creed would not allow it.”

“I know, I know. ‘Stay your blade from the flesh of an innocent.’ I wonder if they are still considered innocent now. They are fighters, killers for sure, but of dark things. Yet they also deceive others and extort them for information.” Malik let out a short laugh. “I suppose that makes them assassins as well, actually.”

Altaïr smirked. “Then we definitely still cannot harm them. ‘Never compromise the Brotherhood.’”

“Mm, indeed,” Malik hummed in agreement. Then he sighed. “They truly put up with us in stride. One wonders if we should return the favor.”

Altaïr snorted. “What, tell them about the Apple? The one we explicitly agreed should not be revealed to anyone, which you constantly remind me of? For both the safety of the Brotherhood and all persons involved?”

“No, of course not!” His reaction was automatic. “I am saying that perhaps we should stop being completely… elusive with them. We could help them out a little on their problem while we’re here since they are so obviously floundering. It’s like they’ve never properly followed someone before.” Altaïr nodded in agreement to that. “And, perhaps, if we fail in finding the Apple... they may help us retrieve it.”

At that, Altaïr pushed his hood back and paused in his tracks, brows scrunched in disbelief. “Wait. Are you serious? You, Malik, would let them help us. The Malik who makes people claw and bite their way from the bottom to gain his trust. The Malik who would prefer to do things by himself whenever possible. You are saying you trust those two with this?”

Malik rolled his eyes. “Yes, Altaïr, I would let them help us. You have pointed out before that we are far enough into the future that enemies and allies are cut off from us, long dead by now. We do not even know if there still is a Brotherhood or Templars. The Winchesters are our only allies here, so we may as well take advantage of the small handhold if need be.”

Altaïr only shook his head. He fully agreed anyway, he was simply shocked Malik thought the same. Altaïr liked teasing the brothers, and they led interesting lives that he wanted to know more about. He did not completely trust them, but he trusted them to not point a blade at him- or whatever weapons they had here. Their reactions were more or less becoming predictable. Having Malik on the same page so quickly was nearly unheard of. He hadn’t even trusted Altaïr until just a few years ago, and that was after a lot of hard work to earn it. Malik was a naturally intellectual person with a challenging disposition. Not a mean one, though it came across as such sometimes, but he wanted people to understand things on their own. He gave back as much respect as he got and no more. People had to prove to him that mutual trust was a good idea. To think that such a critical man would suddenly propose to offer one of their biggest secrets to these people that they have known for a day must mean he was going on intuition this time around.

It wasn’t something Altaïr often did, being the bull head he was, but he was going with Malik’s intuition on this one as well.

---

The last fingers of sunrise had receded completely when the two reached roughly the site where they had dropped into the road. They weren’t sure how far past the sign it was, and at one point someone offered them a ride. Although it was shady, the two accepted if only to expedite their journey. A little ways after they left the Pennsylvania border, the driver let them out of his beat up old car, worried and insisting he at least take them to the next town. Altaïr politely declined, hiding his disgust at the unidentifiable but strong smell the man had apparently slathered himself in. It had choked the passengers the entire drive, so it was lucky they didn’t have to go far in terms of car travel.

With the light of the sun between the trees the two began their search. On either side the road sloped steeply down before leveling out, trees getting closer together the farther from the paved path they grew. Altaïr and Malik split up, taking either side. They diligently looked under every pile of forest debris and behind every rock. The late morning air was chilly to the point their fingers were growing icy while they hunted for the Apple. As the sky grew lighter, their hopes grew dimer. After a couple hours they had covered about twenty meters deep into the woods and a long stretch of road, but to no avail. There wasn’t so much as a glint of gold in sight. They were getting ready to call it quits when Altaïr spotted something off.

“Malik,” he called as he approached the disturbance. It was a mound of pine needles and dirt hastily thrown between the trees, well hidden from the road. The ground was growing colder with the weather and thus harder to dig so whatever was buried was rather shallow, but it was definitely bigger than the Apple.

Malik jogged across the road, slowing as he came up to Altaïr. “What is it?”

Altaïr didn’t answer. Instead he bent down and shifted the loose covering away, revealing something covered in a thin layer of frost and at first unrecognizable. When they realized what it was, they looked solemnly at each other.

Altaïr quickly pushed the dirt back over the scene. He frowned, lips pulled tight. “Looks like we will be telling Sam and Dean after all.”

Chapter Text

The Winchesters gave the assassins long looks, loaded with a mix of confusion and suspicion. Sam was leaning against the wall, arms crossed, while Dean hadn’t bothered to move from his perch on the end of his bed. The older Winchester rubbed a hand down his tired face, hair still ruffled from suddenly waking up to Altaïr and Malik slamming open the motel door and demanding the brothers get up. They had relayed a rather odd story, but there were more pressing matters that it brought up.

“So why exactly did you two sneak out at the asscrack of dawn again?” Dean waved a finger between the two.

“Well, that is a bit harder to explain…”

“Harder to explain than finding a pile of bones buried in the ground off the side of the highway in the middle of nowhere? Well, this is damn sure gonna be interesting then,” he quipped.

Altaïr wasn’t sure how to start. Though they did agree to tell the brothers about the Apple, and they were sure they wouldn’t abuse that knowledge, it was hard to let go of such an important secret. Or even begin to describe the ancient treasure that had caused so much havoc in their life.

Luckily Castiel took that moment to appear in the hotel room. He was mildly disgruntled, but visibly perked up upon seeing the Winchesters.

“Hi,” he said meekly, eyes darting to Dean then quickly away.

Dean simply raised his eyebrows, still bitter over the angel’s earlier quick departures.

Sam, on the other hand, had no such qualms and greeted him in kind. “Did you get another break?”

“Not… exactly.” Cas limply moved his arms, too haggard to bother with full gestures. “Recently we captured one of Metatron’s followers. They’re being interrogated right now, so I took the opportunity to… slip out.”

“‘Slip out’?” Dean inquired. “What are you, the butler with the lead pipe in the dining room?”

Cas tilted his head in a moment of confusion, then sighed. “We’ve been getting more and more angels coming to us, looking for direction. For some reason they keep following me. They’ve even taken to calling me ‘commander’.” He soured at the word. “I do not like that title. It implies that I will be leading them in battle. I have been trying to find a diplomatic solution, but many are pushing for a violent end. It has been difficult to say the least.”

Dean’s face twitched into a look of sympathy before he took on an indifferent composure and patted his friend’s back from where he sat on the motel bed. Cas turned to look at him with a relieved quirk to his lips, having expected a less than friendly gesture.

Altaïr finished his summarized translation of the conversation to Malik before nodding his chin at Castiel. “So, does this mean you are going to be hiding here with us for a while?”

The angel opened his mouth to correct him, but shut it again and nodded. “I prefer the term ‘laying low’, but essentially, yes.”

“Can we trust him, as well?” Altaïr asked his second in command. Malik frowned deeply, but reluctantly nodded his head.

“Sure. Might as well bring the whole of this world in on it.”

Altaïr rolled his eyes. “Stop being so sour, dear one.”

Malik flared up. Although only the angel could understand the term of endearment, he still wanted to slap Altaïr for being so obvious and reckless about their relationship. When such things said in the wrong company could get one killed, even if you thought you could trust them, restraint was a good virtue to have.

“Now that we have everyone,” Altaïr addressed the others, acutely aware of Malik’s anger at his back, “the truth. Malik and I left to go search for the device that brought us to this time. We… know what it is, more or less, and it is our duty to protect it. It was lost when we fell, possibly in the surrounding woods. However not only is the item missing, but the bones were found in the exact same area we believe it was lost. That could mean that someone-”

“Hold up,” Sam interrupted, standing up straight. “You guys know what brought you here? And you didn’t tell us?” The hours wasted and the lies told straight to his face surfaced in his mind. He looked directly at Malik, who met his eyes with conviction. “Why didn’t you say something before?”

“It was not important for you to know,” Malik answered smoothly. “Concealing the existence of this thing has been a top priority since we discovered it. However, the situation has become such that if we are to have any hope of finding it, we could use your help.”

Sam pursed his lips, shaking his head. “We could have helped you sooner if you just-”

“No, Sam. Trust me when I say that this has caused enough trouble for generations of lifetimes. The fewer people involved, the better. Telling you was the last resort if we could not retrieve this cursed object by ourselves.”

Dean glared, frustrated that he couldn’t understand the French nor what was so goddamn important that they betrayed their trust like this. He grumbled, not bothering to look the two traitors in the eye. “Christ, if you two were looking for this thing then why didn’t you just kill us already and go look for it days ago? Seems like that would’ve been easier for a couple of freaking assassins.”

“Dean-” Cas started, but was interrupted.

“Because that is against our Creed,” Altaïr growled, more bitterness in his words than he’d intended. It was enough to startle them into silence. “‘Stay your blade from the flesh of the innocent. Hide in plain sight. Never compromise the Brotherhood.’ As contradictory as much of our actions and morals are, those are the rules we live by. Killing you would have broken the first rule, as you were trying to figure out how to help us, showing us that you were not enemies. So we hid the truth for as long as was necessary. Although we are confident that you are unlikely to harm our Order, or any Orders that may exist in this time, the longer we stay here the more danger we are putting everyone in by not retrieving this artifact.”

There was silence after his outburst. The air was tense as the seriousness of their situation settled in. Altaïr knew the Creed as any member of the Brotherhood would. He knew that under the wrong direction, on it’s own the Creed was not enough to counteract corruption. He also knew all too well the consequences of dismissing it, however. Proof enough of that was the scars that Malik would always carry with him, from his arm to the little brother that was lost to Altaïr’s foolish mistakes.

It was Cas who broke the silence. “Which object is it that you lost?”

Altaïr glanced at Malik, who was stone faced, before answering. “The Apple of Eden.”

Cas’ eyes went wide. “The Apple? You had possession of a Piece of Eden?”

“Hold on, you mean to tell me a piece of fruit brought these two through time?” Dean asked, leaning forward.

Cas shook his head. “It’s not a fruit. It’s a powerful device developed around the time of Adam and Eve.” He looked down at the floor, feeling his shoulders sag with the weight of the revelation.

“Before humans were in the Garden of Eden there were beings that already lived there called the Isu—human prototypes, of sorts—who created the Pieces of Eden to essentially control humans and keep them obedient. When the humans were forced to leave the Garden of Eden they waged war against the Isu and the Pieces were mostly destroyed. Very few remain, and they’re all lost.”

“Wow. That’s messed up.” The older Winchester crossed his arms, processing the information.

“But if these Pieces of Eden were meant to control men, then how did one pull us through time?” Altaïr asked.

Cas made his way to the table, where he pulled out a chair and sank into it. “I’m not sure. I was not around the Garden, and I only know about the Pieces because we were called down to end the war and destroy them.” He shrugged. “The Isu were very aloof and intelligent, but they died out, taking the secrets of their technology with them. An Apple could probably do many things that we don’t know about.”

“They managed to keep that even from the angels?” Sam asked.

Cas nodded. “We had… other things to focus on. Besides, we were simply told to bow to humans. Watching over the Garden was Gadreel's job.”

The brothers tense at the name. Gadreel was high on Dean’s shit list for betraying him, and Sam still felt violated at being possessed by the deceitful angel.

“Ha. Sounds like a very angel thing to do,” Dean forced out in an attempt to keep them on task. He stood up, brushing imaginary dust off of his pants. “So, let me get this straight: you’re saying is there’s some not-angel thing out there and we have no idea what it does other than it’s extremely powerful and can mind control people? Plus it’s either lost or in the hands of whoever and whatever our arm-stealing killer is?” He threw up his hands. “This is just great. Peachy.”

“Dean…” Cas shot him a withering glance. Then he sighed and turned to the assassins. “Are you sure you couldn’t find the Apple? Something this dangerous has to be retrieved and destroyed immediately.”

Altaïr tensed up. There was a guilty pit forming in his stomach even as his mind immediately shouted no. He would like to excuse it away, the pull that he felt towards the Apple and the dark whispers he drew from it. He would insist the hours and days he sat locked in his room with the golden orb were not obsession. He would like to argue he wanted it purely for research purposes to improve the Order, aid in the betterment of assassins world wide, or some other side goal. Instead he just clenched his fist and said “yes.”

The angel cursed, biting his thumb and putting his other hand on his hip. Dean looked over at him, staring.

“It seems to be a strong possibility that whoever buried those bones might have stolen it,” Sam said, clearing his throat before continuing. “We have a few leads, but no solid evidence on what they are.” He shrugged. “We could perform our usual tests on the suspects, see if they react to anything.”

Dean nodded his head, taking his eyes off of Cas. “Yeah, then tie them up and ask them nicely to tell us where this magic fruit is. Sounds like a plan,” he said with mild sarcasm.

Malik had taken to sitting on the edge of the other bed, so Altaïr leaned down to quietly translate for him. He smoldered over the information, his fingers digging into his jeans. He kept quiet though, sending a subtle glare at Cas that went unnoticed. Altaïr understood; he didn’t want to speak where he could understand them.

The Winchesters gathered their coats and knives, moving around Altaïr and Malik like they had the plague. Malik rolled his eyes at the display, but the five of them went out and stuffed themselves into the car nonetheless. The ride to the morgue was deathly quiet. No one so much as looked at each other the whole way there. After pulling into the parking lot Dean got out and slammed his door with a little more force than necessary.

Altaïr and Malik looked at each other, unsure if they should get out as well. They decided to follow anyway, meeting Sam and Cas at the trunk of the car that Dean was propping open. The older brother had a face of stone as he pulled up two flasks of holy water, a vial of salt, and a spoon. He split the items up, very obviously skipping over the assassins.

Sam held up the spoon, turning it over in his hand. “Dean, what- when did you-”

“Silver spoon,” Dean cut him off. “Found it. Thought it’d be easier to get people to touch than a knife.”

“And by found you mean-”

“Stole.”

“Yeah,” Sam said, raising his eyebrows and pocketing the utensil. “Figured.”

Dean started to head to the entrance, but paused and took a step back, turning to Altaïr. “It’d be suspicious if all of us went in. You two should probably wait out here.”

Altaïr raised an eyebrow. “I think not. It’s our-”

Cas put a hand on his shoulder, causing him to slip quickly out of the way. “Dean’s right, too many people are suspicious.”

Dean nodded his head sagely, a half smile on his lips.

“That’s why he and Sam are going after one of the suspects and the three of us are going after the others.”

“What.” Dean looked on incredulously as Cas walked past him.

“You said you had multiple suspects, so it only makes sense to split up and find the culprit quicker. I’m sure the three of us can take them on, and you two are more than capable of handling yourselves.”

As annoyed as he was, Altaïr couldn’t help but grin as he nudged Malik and the two of them strode past Dean. He didn’t expect the angel to be (at least partially) on their side.

“But- fine. Whatever.” Dean stormed after them, dragging a miffed younger brother behind him. "We're getting the red head, then!"

Inside the morgue there was very little activity. A few police officers were still dealing with paperwork and having various people sign off on statements, clearly not prepared to deal with an actual murder instead of a run-of-the-mill traffic accident. It had only been four days since the body was discovered, but the morgue couldn’t close down entirely for the investigation so there was a section in the back sanctioned off where Ms. Goldman’s body was kept. Sam and Dean waved at the receptionist as they headed towards it.

The back rooms were bustling, officers and workers going between the block of neat little offices towards the front and the two walls of cold chambers in the far back. There was police tape over the door of the chamber the victim was found in. Leaning over a metal cart was a red haired woman in a lab coat.

“Miss Woods,” Sam called. Her head shot up and she pushed her glasses back up on her nose.

“Oh. Agents. What brings you back?”

“Just some follow up questions,” Dean replied. He waved, indicating the general room. “How have things been in Corpse Town?”

Holly pulled a face. She crossed her arms and shrugged. “Nothing new has happened since Ms. Goldman kicked the bucket. Although, we do have a lot more people around.”

Sam shot a quick, confused glance at Dean. He shared the same befuddled look; she seemed to have taken a complete 180 from her tear-filled interview the last time they talked to her. Sam shoved his hands in his pockets. “R-right. Must be a nice change of pace. But I guess with her gone, you have to do a lot more work?”

“Oh yeah, tons. That lady took on a lot of stuff, and until we replace her all of us have to pull extra weight. Mostly paperwork and secretary stuff, but they handed all her dirty work off to me.”

“Meaning...?”

She nodded her head at the cart beside her. On it were several small tools as well as vials of blood, mysterious liquids in plastic containers, and a few baggies of cotton swabs.

“Ah. So. Last time we were here-” Sam moved his hand out from his pocket as if to indicate the chambers, not-so-subtly dropping the silver spoon on the ground. It slid across the smooth tile and stopped right before Holly's feet. “Oh, I'm sorry about that.”

Holly looked down at it and back up at Sam. There was a short breath of silence before she spoke. “You keep a spoon in your pocket?”

Dean looked at his younger brother, mouthing 'really?' Sam just shuffled from foot to foot. “I must've... accidentally taken it from the restaurant. Um, Miss Woods, would you mind picking that up for me? I uh, I have a bad back.”

Holly paused for a second, then narrowed her eyes. “Why can't he do it?” She jerked her head at Dean.

“Well...”

Dean sighed and rolled his eyes. He bent down and picked up the spoon, but as he stood up he looked for a place he could brush it against her skin without looking too weird. Unfortunately, not only was she covered head to toe in scrubs and a lab coat, her hands were firmly under her arms, leaving the only exposed skin her face and neck.

He looked back at Sam, exasperated, then back at Holly. “You know what ma'am, I've been having a really bad day. I mean really bad. Can you do me a favor? Can you just hold the spoon for a second?”

Holly just stared at him with a plain, neutral expression.

“Come on, Holly, was it? Look, I know it's weird, but just give me this. It'll make my day if you do.”

No response. Confused, Dean waved a hand in front of her face. He was met with nothing more than a sudden tilt of her head, as if her neck had just given up on supporting her skull. Carefully he reached out and gently tapped her head with the spoon.

Like a television switching off she seemed to expand and shimmer for a moment before collapsing in on herself and disappearing completely. At the same moment there was a loud crash and shouting from somewhere near the lobby. The light went out, all at once shrouding them in darkness.

“What did you do!?” Sam shouted.

Dean held up both hands. “Wasn't me this time, I swear!”

There was another shout and the two rushed back to the front of the building. The few police that had been in the lobby were gone, and the receptionist was standing at her desk with a wide eyed expression. Sam and Dean turned toward the hallway she was looking down to see Altaïr and Malik on the ground with a flimsy wooden door underneath them. As they got closer they noticed Cas just inside the now doorless room, leaning against a wall and rubbing at his eyes.

“Cas? What's going on here?” Dean demanded as Sam rushed forward to help get the assassins to their feet.

“The girl- she has the Apple,” he growled out. He shook his head and blinked a couple of times.

“What!? How? What do you mean Holly has the-”

“It wasn't the girl,” Altaïr groaned. He pulled Malik to his feet and rubbed at his side where the doorknob probably left a nasty bruise.

The brothers' attention flicked to Altaïr. He motioned at his partner. “Malik said as much before the imposter blinded us with some sort of flash of light and an explosion happened.”

Said whistle blower was muttering a string of curses, shoving people out of his way to go back into the room. He squinted at something inside a trash can and reached down inside. Upon the brothers' closer inspection, they could tell they were in a storage room of some kind, with shelves of boxes filling up most of the small, dusty area. There were no windows on this end of the hall nor in the storage room, so it was hard to make out much more.

Malik stood up again, holding the thing between his forefinger and thumb. It was a clump of hair, partially stuck together by a dark liquid. He brought it out into the hallway where there was marginally more light. The hair was a fiery orange-red, and the liquid was quite obviously blood.

Dean leaned in close. “Isn't that-”

“Holly's?” Sam squinted at it. “But we just saw her, and she looked fine. Before disappearing into thin air that is.”

Cas shook his head, still blinking hard. “I suspect that wasn't the real Holly then. It might've been an illusion created by the Apple.”

Dean shuffled into the room, swinging the dazed angel’s arm over his shoulder and leading him into the hall. “Are you serious? How do you know? What happened?”

“Malik figured it out.” Altaïr once more nodded his chin at the other as the five of them made their way out of the morgue. “We went to find the janitor first when we ran into the girl. She was in that room bent over the bin. She was very surprised to see us and couldn’t keep focus when we tried to tell her you guys were looking for her. Then Malik noticed there was blood on her collar.” He motioned to the spot with a finger, just below the chin. “Considering the room has nothing to do with her work with bodies, he found it more suspicious she had blood on her. He told us to ask her about it and she got defensive and tried to cover it. She backed up into the bin, reached for something in her pocket. Cas stepped forward to ask her what was going on and she brought out the Apple and she vanished. The flash that knocked out all of the lights.”

Dean cursed, jumping into the car and revving the engine of the impala a little more than necessary. They tore out of the parking lot. He glanced at the back seat through the rearview mirror. “Are you alright Cas?”

“Yes, I will be. The explosion was meant to disorient, but I don’t think whoever has the Apple understands how to use it. It ended up more like a weak banishment spell.” He held his fists in his lap, his forehead wrinkled and his face pale. Dean shot another worried glance at the angel, but said nothing.

“So where are we going? If it wasn’t Holly, then that means it was either Mr. Donno or Peter, and chances are Holly’s either dead or being held captive.” Sam rested his chin in his hand and puffed out some air. “All this and we still haven’t found out who or what the culprit is.”

“Easy,” Dean said. “We’re gonna hit them both, the janitor first. If the Apple Holly was where the janitor was supposed to be, then that’s who we look at first.”

Altaïr shook his head. “I don’t think it was him. He has a wife who would notice if something like a body was brought home, and he lives in a small place with lots of people.”

Sam started nodding in agreement. “Yeah, I guess. Peter does live alone in a house, no family…”

“And… I think I might have an idea of what he is.”

“Seriously? You have an idea?” Dean raised an accusatory eyebrow. Sam punched his shoulder.

Altaïr rolled his eyes. “Well, if lore and myth really might be true, then… We have this legend where we come from of a monster called a ghūl. They are monsters who feast on the flesh of the dead and can take the appearance of whatever poor unfortunate they eat. If the girl is the victim of the ghūl, then that explains why neither Holly seemed to be real.”

“A ghoul,” Sam breathed. “Of course. I-it has the strength to rip Ms. Goldman’s arms off, eat all the flesh until they were just bones to dispose of in the woods, would thrive in a place full of dead bodies…” He trailed off, ticking the facts off on his fingers. “I bet he disguised himself as Holly since she was at the bottom of our list of suspects. He probably didn’t expect us to show up and split up searching for the suspects, so he made an illusion to throw us off which disappeared as soon as he got distracted and had to flee.”

“Hey, at least this means there’s a chance Red Hot is alive. If Peter decided to change his diet and feed on the living, that is,” Dean interjected.

All of a sudden, Castiel grabbed the driver’s seat. He patted the elder Winchester on the shoulder before he could shout in alarm, however. “I… need to go,” he muttered out in his gravelly voice.

Dean’s shoulders immediately fell. “Already? But you’re still messed up from the magic grenade.”

Cas’s lips quirked at his silly naming conventions. “Unfortunately, yes. The interrogation is over and the others need me.” His hand, still resting on Dean, gave him a light squeeze. “I’ll be back soon.”

Dean sighed as the hand slipped from him and the backseat was suddenly down to two people. He rolled his shoulders and tried to play it off. “Sucks that we’re not gonna have an angel in this fight, but we can handle it.”

Altaïr narrowed his eyes but chose not to comment on what was clearly the real source of his problem. “Of course we can. Two monster hunters and two assassins versus a graveyard creature with a device of untold power and a possible hostage? What could go-”

“Don’t you dare finish that question.”

Chapter Text

Altaïr and Malik were starting to get used to the car. It was still a strange sensation, moving so fast down a road with the roar of the motor and whipping of the wind eventually becoming steady background noise. The smell of burgers and Winchesters and freshly churned dirt was no longer new.

Getting jerked around as Dean whipped the Impala around corners was though, as well as the dig of the seatbelts that Sam insisted they wear at least for this joyride. It was probably a good thing, too, because Dean was leaving skid marks around town with how fast and loose he was playing with things like speed limits and traffic laws.

They reached Peter Korey’s house in record time. The Impala rolled to a graceless stop out front after nearly bowling down a man in a grey hoodie who fell to the ground and stared at them with wide eyes as they passed. Once more they tumbled out of the sleek black car, feeling as if they had run a gauntlet or rolled down a hill very fast; the nausea was the same. Dean went to the back and popped the trunk, reaching in to lift up the false bottom.

“Gonna need to be able to either chop the head off or do some serious damage to it to kill this thing,” he explained to the lackluster trio. “So, what’s everyone’s weapon of choice?”

Sam reached in and pulled out pistol ammo. Dean raised an eyebrow and his brother shrugged. “It’s still the middle of the day. A machete’s not exactly a subtle thing to show up on someone’s doorstep with.”

The older Winchester conceded the point and pulled out some extra ammo for his own handgun, making sure it was fully loaded. He glanced over at the assassins, whom he still wasn’t entirely sure he trusted yet. “What about you two?”

Altaïr glanced in the trunk and shook his head. “We don’t know how to use half of these… weapons?” He loosely gestured at a cross necklace. He couldn’t even fathom what that was supposed to be used for. “Our blades will do.”

“Fair enough.” Dean closed the trunk with a click and shuffled onto the sidewalk.

There was no car in the driveway but lights shone through white curtains. The brothers kept their weapons drawn and down as they carefully approached the front door, eyes darting to the windows. Dean looked back at the other three and held a finger to his lips before rapping on the door with a knuckle. No answer came. He furrowed his brow and tested the handle, the door opening with ease.

One by one they entered the house into the living room. It was just as mundane on the inside as everything else about the man appeared to be, with the exception of the absolute mess it all was in. Plain couches were scattered with magazines, a boring drink-ring-stained coffee table was upturned, simple polos and slacks tossed on top of an ordinary tv stand. There was a hole in the off-white wall, perhaps from a punch or heavy object and dirty footprints on the dull tan carpet. Everyone was put on edge.

The four of them fanned out, prowling over the mess while straining their eyes and ears for the first sign of a threat. Sam swept the entryway into the hall that led to the rest of the house. It didn’t appear that anyone was home but every room was trashed. He sighed in frustration as he made his way into the kitchen, hoping for any kind of clue.

The kitchen appeared to have had the worst of whatever made the mess with nearly every drawer and cupboard opened and upturned. Sam pulled open the fridge, preparing for body parts or rotting food, but it was completely empty. Curious, he opened the freezer only to be met with the same nothingness. He scrunched his brow and looked more closely at the mess around him. There wasn’t a single scrap of food anywhere to be found, human or otherwise.

Sam leaned out of the doorway, brow furrowed. “There’s nothing. I don’t get it.”

“There has to be something.” Altaïr stepped out of the bedroom looking just as annoyed. “He did not simply run away. Even if he knows that we are onto him, he has the advantage of the Apple, and he is at his ideal hunting grounds.”

“Yeah, well, maybe we spooked him,” Dean grunted from his position hunched in front of a cabinet. He closed the drawer he was rifling through and stood up. “Hunters don’t usually go out in groups. Maybe with five of us- er, four- he didn’t think he had a chance and booked it.”

Altaïr hummed in response. Just then Malik called from down the hall. The other three rushed to see him glaring at a blank wall. Nothing seemed amiss other than the frankly ugly green striped wallpaper and a couple of framed pictures of generic scenery.

“What is it?” Sam asked.

Malik pointed at the pictures. “Is it not strange that this is the only place untouched by the chaos?” Without waiting for an answer he withdrew a blade and felt along the wall with the tips of his fingers. He paused when they caught on a groove and he worked the small knife into it, prying open a thin particle wood door. It swung open on silent hinges, revealing a staircase leading down.

Sam let out a small laugh. “I guess there is something after all.”

They descended the stairs, Dean leading the way with a flashlight in one hand and a handgun in the other. The dusty wooden steps creaking and their controlled breathing was overshadowed by the hissing rumble of a furnace that echoed through the basement. When they reached the bottom Sam clicked on his own spare flashlight and waved it around. A glint of something shiny on the ground, partially hidden by a wooden shelf, gave him pause and he waved at the others to carefully follow him.

Sam rounded the shelf, gun raised, only to immediately drop to his knees and set the weapon on the ground.

“Holly!”

“Jesus,” Dean hissed, holstering his gun and bending down to help Sam with the chains wrapped around the unconscious intern. They were fairly heavy, like the ones used for strong dogs, and a padlock keeping them in place. The sturdy clasps around her wrists looked like something homemade - nothing that would be easy to break. Holly had dried blood plastering some hair to her head and her glasses were missing, but she was breathing, so there was at least that victory. Sam patted her dirt-streaked cheek repeatedly while Dean dug through his pockets for anything to pick the lock with.

“Hey. Miss Woods. Holly. Holly! Wake up!”

The redhead groaned softly and squinted against the brightness of the flashlights. “Wh… wha…?”

“Dammit. Do you two have anything for this?” Dean looked up at the assassins, holding one of the cuffs up. Altaïr furrowed his brow and knelt down, patting through his jackets for tools. Holly grabbed Dean’s hand and squeezed.

“Oh my god. I didn’t- I didn’t think…” She took a shaky breath as she held back tears. “He- it’s him. Peter. It’s him. It’s him! Please! You have to do something!”

“Hey hey hey. Holly.” Sam put a hand on her shoulder and locked eyes with the panicked woman. “It’s okay. Alright? We’re here to rescue you. We need you to calm down. Can you do that for us?”

Holly swallowed hard and gave a small nod though her breathing was tight. She looked to Altaïr who pulled her grip from Dean and started picking the lock between her wrists, focusing on his delicate movements. It seemed to work as she brought her breathing under control. Thank god, Altaïr thought to himself. Now was not the time to work herself up into a panic attack. That could happen when she was safe.

“Good,” Sam said steadily. “Now, can you tell us what happened? How did you end up in Peter’s basement?”

“He caught me at work. I-I was cleaning up Ms. Goldman’s office at the morgue this morning. Going through her papers a-and moving files so I knew what to put in records and what was active. I… she had some things, set aside, in her desk…”

Altaïr let out a quiet curse as one of his thin tools snapped. He blinked hard as he tossed the broken bits of metal to the side and withdrew another. He was too tired for this, but he didn’t have a lot of chances to mess up.

“I, uhm, was looking at them and… and they were copies of some autopsy reports. Lots of them. She marked up inconsistencies and there were, um, lots of things missing. Damages that were on the bodies that were never recorded.” She shook her head, messy red hair clinging to her sweat-soaked forehead. Her eyes were out of focus. “All of the autopsies were finished off by Peter. I… I think he was taking parts of people and Ms. Goldman caught on. Before I could even leave the office to tell somebody, though, Peter came in and, and he saw what I found. He hit me with something he had in his pocket, knocked me out.”

“Jesus. That explains why he went after Goldman then,” Sam said. “Her arms were either a snack or to get rid of evidence I bet. She doesn't sound like the type to go down without a fight.”

“Snack!?”

“Maybe a little of both,” Dean shrugged. “Who knows? The quicker we gank this sucker the better, though. I have a killer headache right now and this place is starting to smell weird.”

“I-I’m sorry, snack?” Holly trembled. The lock clicked open around her wrists and the heavy cuffs clattered to the ground. She rubbed at the tender skin there as she glanced between the two hunters. “What do you mean?”

As Sam began to break the news of her coworker’s monstrous nature, Malik couldn’t help the tingling feeling along his spine, like something was wrong. He took a cautious whiff, and his suspicion rose. The air was definitely different from when they came down the stairs. He stepped closer to Altaïr and found his head spinning even with such little movement.

“Alt… Altaïr, something is not -” Malik barely got the words out before falling to the ground.

“Malik!” Altaïr swore as he swiftly dropped his tools and stumbled over to him, one hand going for a knife to fend off whatever danger there was. He tried blinking but he couldn’t clear the fog from his vision. In seconds he too collapsed.

Dean’s head drooped and his words slurred. “What the fuck…”

He noticed Holly close her eyes and felt himself be pulled under as well. Sam, confused and baffled but too sluggish to piece things together, tried to use the wooden shelf Holly was slumped against to stand up but only got part way before limply falling back down. Within seconds all five people were unconscious.

On the stairs leading down to the basement, Peter Korey peaked his head in, mask sitting tightly over his mouth and nose. His eyes crinkled at the corners as he smiled.

Chapter Text

There was a pounding behind Altaïr’s eyes as he opened them. Everything was tingling as if he’d held his breath too long. He felt dizzy and his nose and throat were burning, but at least he was awake. A strained look around revealed that he was still in the basement of Peter’s house. They were in the far back, though, past the shelf where Holly had been tied up. Fencing was tacked up from floor to ceiling with a door set into it, forming a makeshift cage against the back wall where all five of them were stuck in cuffs bolted to the ground.

Peter wasn’t in sight, but there were sounds of someone messing with tools on a table between some nearby racks, so he wasn’t far. Holly was still on the ground beside the shelving unit, but her chains were gone, replaced with zipties on her wrists and feet. She was curled up on the floor, eyes closed. Altaïr flopped against the concrete wall, head rolling over to the side. To his left Dean was still passed out, Sam leaning against him. To his right was Malik, stuffed into the corner. Altaïr kicked out with his foot, snagging his fellow assassin in the leg. Malik’s brow pinched and he grumbled as he came-to.

“Hmmn… what the hell,” he muttered.

“My thoughts exactly, my dear,” Altaïr quietly replied. He reeled back and gave the same treatment to Dean’s knee.

Dean jerked back, holding his knee between his bound hands as best he could. “Ow, fuck! I was awake you bastard,” he lied.

Sam stirred from the commotion just in time for Peter to pop his beady little balding head out from behind the shelves. His smile was sickly wide, too full of teeth. The hanging lamp above cast stark shadows on his face. The unassuming, nervous office worker act was gone, and in it’s place was the monster, cunning and ravenous.

“Oh good, it looks like none of you have gone into cardiac arrest or renal failure. Not that I would’ve had too much of a problem if you all had died, but that would’ve been a loss of some valuable subjects.” He shrugged. “That’s the risk of using chloroform gas, though. Try not to puke if you can! I’m not coming in there to clean up your mess.”

Dean gave an experimental tug on his cuffs, but they were pretty well-rooted into the ground. “How come you haven’t killed us, huh? You already got us knocked out and chained up. What, got a taste for fresher meat all of a sudden?”

Peter laughed, a reedy sound that echoed in the dim basement. “You sound like you want to be eaten. But no, I have bigger plans than that.”

He went back to his workbench, fiddling with something as he continued talking. “I’m not stupid. I know if you kill one hunter more show up. It’s already high stakes enough seeing so many of you in one place- haha, I didn’t think I deserved this much attention! But then, hoo hoo, I got lucky. I saw why four hunters are here. And now I don’t have to worry about that sort of thing ever again.”

Peter stepped out fully into view, a perfect, golden orb held between his hands. It looked to be carved in a few simple, swooping patterns, weighty, and the size of an apple.

Altaïr’s eyes went wide and he jerked up, attempting to get his feet under him. “Unhand that immediately! You have no idea what it is capable of!”

Malik cursed as he began pulling back and forth on his bindings. Sam looked between him and the orb. Ah. So that’s the Apple.

Peter laughed. “Oh you stupid, stupid hunter! You don’t know what you’re talking about. I am discovering it’s secrets more every day. I can already do so much, and soon this whole town will be eating out of the palm of my hands. And there’s nothing any hunter will be able to do about it.”

“What are you talking about?” Dean asked, brow furrowed.

“I’ll show you.” The ghoul placed the orb in his pocket and pulled out a switchblade as he strode over to Holly. The Winchesters rattled around, yanking hard on their cuffs and shouting, before he cut her binds and lifted her by her fiery red hair. She awoke with a yelp and attempted to squirm away, but he held fast and threw her down in front of the cage. She looked up, tears in her eyes, and gasped.

“Wha- what-” Her head whipped around to Peter and she cowered in fear.

“Leave her alone!” Worry leaked into Altaïr’s tone. He knew what the Apple was capable of, and there was no telling which awful thing Peter was planning.

Peter brought out the Apple once more to hold it aloft, and it began to glow with a brilliant yellow light that pulsed outward once, twice. The pulses engulfed the area around him, including Holly, before retreating back into the Apple and a bolt of lightning connected her and it. She twitched with a cry and slumped back to the ground.

“What did you do to her!?” Sam yelled. “Holly!”

She looked up and locked eyes with Sam. Suddenly her whole demeanor shifted. She flung herself against the cage, growling angrily, violently shaking the metal mesh. Holly looked around for a way in and, finding the door, started desperately pulling at the padlock. “I’m gonna kill you! I’ll kill you, you bastard!”

“Holly?” Sam asked, confused.

Peter snickered. “Simple mind control, really. It all starts coming together the moment this beautiful thing is in your hands.” He caressed the orb. “Harder with more people, but I’m getting there. Illusions, crippling pain, changing someone’s complete way of thinking… Anything is possible as long as I have this baby. I won’t have to hide at all with it. Holly, dear.”

She stopped immediately and snapped to attention. He leaned over and retrieved something from his workbench.

“Here’s the keys. Have fun killing them.”

He tossed the key ring at her and she greedily caught it like a kid catching candy at a parade. With a feverish tremble she managed to unlock the padlock and yanked the door open. She pulled the key back out and wielded it like a tiny knife as she stepped into the makeshift cell, manic eyes darting between the four men, debating who to pounce on first.

Then a lot of things happened at once.

Someone tackled Peter from behind, sending them both reeling into the shelving units. Holly lunged at Sam, key poised to jam into his neck. Sam kicked her in the gut as Dean shouted obscenities at her. Malik managed to get good leverage on his cuff and forced the bolt in the ground free. Altaïr pulled a short knife out of his boot and jammed it at the juncture where his own cuffs closed, attempting to force them open despite his limited range of motion.

A scuffle ensued outside the cage while inside Sam and Dean tried to hold off Holly. She dropped the keys and looked ready to go grab something sharper but Malik clocked the side of her head, knocking her out cold. He kicked the keys over to Sam, who quickly went about setting the rest of them free, before going to join the fray.

Peter was much stronger than he looked, but even he was having trouble fending off the stranger in a grey hoodie. Several stab wounds littered Peter's torso, though they didn’t seem to be slowing him down much. He clutched the Apple tightly in one hand but the stranger wasn’t giving him time to use it, jumping right back in after being thrown off to keep the ghoul off-balance. Peter stumbled but didn’t go down. Malik took advantage of the distraction and elbowed Peter in the face, causing him to grunt and backhand the assassin with the Apple. Malik tasted blood and white spots swam in his vision.

The stranger grabbed his wrist and twisted his hand, forcing Peter to drop the Apple. Before it could hit the ground Malik quickly caught it, tumbling to do so, and landed on his back with an ‘oomph’. Altaïr rushed out to him, newly freed, with Sam and Dean close behind.

The ghoul, having realized his all-powerful weapon was gone, picked the stranger up by the neck and threw him at the brothers. He lunged toward Altaïr and Malik with a frustrated scream. Altaïr collided with Peter in an attempt to keep him away from Malik, though that inhuman strength knocked him down easily. Peter grabbed at Altaïr's jacket and snapped his teeth into his shoulder, wrenching a shout from him as blood sprang from the wound.

With a nasty squelching noise he tore a piece of Altaïr’s shoulder off and whirled on Malik. He sprang onto the other assassin, spitting the flesh in his horrified face, and wrestled the Apple from his grip.

Almost tripping over each other the Winchesters and the stranger ran over and tried to yank the thrashing and growling monster off of him. They managed to pin one of his arms behind his back and Dean looked around and spotted their weapons on the table Peter had been messing with earlier.

“Knife, now!” he barked at the stranger, nodding his head at the large hunting blade.

The stranger darted over and tossed the weapon to Dean just as Peter shook himself free.

“You damn bastard,” Dean huffed. “Just stay still and let us kill you.”

Peter chuckled. His teeth were wet and red from Altaïr’s blood, and he licked it off. His skin began to shimmer with sweat, then more skin as his flesh began to bead up and slide down his shifting form. “I can do whatever the hell I want. I have this.”

He lifted the Apple and it began to glow brightly. Dean raised his knife, ready to feel the rush of severing this asshole’s head from his body, the scar on his arm burning with the desire, the need to kill and-

-and then there was a sickening thunk, and Peter froze, eyes rolling around wildly for a brief second, and he fell to the floor, a small, precise hole at the base of his skull. Above him panted the stranger, hand still pulled back from the hidden blade protruding from his sleeve.

He flicked his hand and the knife slid back into place, blood and all. His arms shook as he caught his breath and rested his hands on his legs and groaned.

“Fuck. Please tell me he’s dead. I haven’t eaten in awhile and I could really fucking use a donut or something before I start hallucinating more.”

Dean was lost, still trying to figure out what to do with his suddenly thwarted blood-lust let alone process what just happened. Meanwhile Sam bent down and turned Peter’s head to the side, inspecting the wound.

“Uh. Yeah I’d say you got him pretty good. Probably best to take his head off just in case, but ahem. I think that’s the cleanest I’ve ever seen a ghoul kill.”

“Oh good.” He huffed and wiped his forehead with the back of his blood-splattered sleeve.

There was a muttered curse off in the corner and Sam turned his attention to the two assassins. Malik’s lip was split but he didn’t look worse for wear as he attempted to tend to his partner. Altaïr, though, was clutching his shoulder, a dark red stain spreading down his clothes, grimacing at the pain.

“How you two holding up?” he called. “Comment allez-vous?”

Malik glared up at Sam and gestured at Altaïr. “How do you fucking think we are?”

“Oh great. They really are here.” The stranger slapped his hand over his eyes and tilted his head back. “Christ, I was still hoping you guys were Bleeding Effects.”

Altaïr’s brow pinched more than it already was. “That voice,” he murmured to Malik. “I think I know that voice.”

The stranger pushed his hood back and smiled bitterly over at Altaïr. His face was shockingly similar to the assassin he looked down at. His hair was short and curly, face covered in dark scruff, his brown eyes tired and dull, and his smile was slightly twisted by the scar across his lips.

“Gee, grandpa,” he said sarcastically, “don’t recognize your own descendant?”

Chapter Text

Dean knew many things. He knew he was a hard worker, a good soldier, a better hunter, and a daddy’s boy. He knew how to be smooth with (most) ladies and how to kill a hundred creatures in a hundred ways. He knew how to fix his car like nobody else, which backroad diners served the best apple pies, and that he would do anything to keep his small family together. 

He knew he was staring at a guy who just killed a ghoul and looked exactly like the 500 year old time-traveling assassin that was possibly bleeding out in the corner, even down to the sliver of a scar over the right side of their mouths.

What he didn’t know was how in the absolute fuck they got to this point. And quite frankly he was more focused on trying not to sink his knife into whoever happened to be closest than figuring out that little mystery at the moment. 

The jagged symbol on Dean’s arm felt like a brand that only giving in to bloodlust would quench the heat of. He did have a moment of clarity in his thoughts in which he wondered if the mark influenced Cain the same way or if Cain was the one that influenced the mark. Then he scoffed at the realization that all the damn biblical bullshit seemed to happen to him, the most atheist one between the brothers and possibly of his whole family.

Sam on the other hand checked back into reality much quicker than his brother. He grabbed a saw from the tool table and swung around to point it at the stranger, who held his hands up and backed away.

“Whoa there, Sasquatch! I literally just got done fighting. I’m not up for a round two.”

“Then do you want to tell me why you two look alike?” Sam demanded.

“Runs in the family.” The stranger rolled his eyes and gestured at Altaïr, who was sitting there with his hoodie half off, gripping his bloody shoulder in stunned silence while Malik glared. “Do you maybe wanna tell me what the fuck my great-great-great yadda yadda grandpa is doing sitting in a Pennsylvania basement in the year… uh… god what year is it?”

Sam’s face turned painfully confused. “That’s not- you realize that’s not a good explanation right? Faces don’t get passed down like family heirlooms.”

“Genetics are bound to repeat a few things in a similar order every now and then. We’re not that alike if you ask me.”

Admittedly, Sam thought while looking between the two, the shocking resemblance wasn't one-to-one. Slightly off nose that hadn’t set right after being broken, smaller lips, different jawline, thicker eyebrows, different eye colors… Where this stranger had extremely short dark curls contrasting his moderately paler skin, Altaïr had straight, spiky, sandy brown hair and features weathered by a life spent outside. Not to mention the stranger looked very ill; his eyes were ringed with dark circles and his scruffy, patchy facial hair barely concealed sunken cheeks and sallow skin.

"Now you have to answer my question! Why and how are these two here, now?"

“Time-travel,” Dean supplied, shaking off the lingering feelings of savagery and just wanting to move on.

“Thank you! I buy that!” The stranger sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Why the fuck not, am I right?”

“Sorry, um, who are you?” Sam asked.

“I don’t fucking know anymore,” he said tiredly. “At this moment I seem to be myself, but who knows when that’ll change.”

“You’re… Desmond, right?” Altaïr ventured as he pushed his hood fully down. He tried to get to his feet and winced in pain. Malik cursed quietly but helped him stand all the same. “I heard you… saw you, through the Apple.”

Desmond’s eyes went wide. “Whoa, whoa-ho-ho. You- you're… You were able to watch me? Huh. That’s… That's weird. You know, for all the time I spent looking through your life, it never occurred to me you’d be able to see mine.” His face suddenly creased with deep sadness as a memory, both his own and not, mingled in his mind. “There was Ezio, but he… He only knew I existed, I think…”

Now it was Altaïr’s turn to be surprised. Before he could ask more Dean used the hunting knife in his hands to loudly and messily decapitate the ghoul.

All eyes turned to him. He hacked away, finished the job, and stood up with the slimy head gripped tightly by the hair before he noticed the looks they were all giving him.

“What?”

--

About an hour later the group was back at the playground where four grown men had taken their frustrations out on each other with their fists. Everyone was cleaned and bandaged up, the body disposed of in a blaze of glory, Holly dropped off at the hospital (thankfully freed of the mind control but almost definitely with a concussion), and a pitiful selection of fast food laid out on a picnic table for them all to eat.

Most of it was scarfed down by the man called Desmond Miles. He claimed to be an ex-assassin but refused to elaborate once the food was placed in front of him, too busy inhaling it all. He packed away so many burgers at once that even Dean called it quits after two bites, and his own food was sacrificed to the seemingly insatiable man.

"Dude. When was the last time you ate?"

Desmond turned his eyes up thoughtfully and hummed through his bite. "Like… Two? No. Three? Maybe five."

Sam squinted and blinked. Then his mouth pulled in a sympathetic but disgusted frown. "I have a feeling that's not in hours."

Desmond shrugged and swallowed. "I can't really tell anymore. The Bleeding Effect makes it hard to know what's real. I don't even know what year it is half the time. For a while there I was trying everything under the sun to make it go away, but I think that only made it worse. Everything's just…" He petered off into silence.

Awkwardly Sam cleared his throat. "What is that, anyway?"

Desmond took a second before his eyes focused and he looked up at Sam. "What?"

"The 'Bleeding Effect'? You mentioned it before."

"Oh, uh." He scratched the back of his head and stole a glance at Altaïr and Malik, who had not stopped staring at him since the basement. "Well, how much do you all know about the Animus?"

"Anna-whosit?" Dean asked.

"Right. Okay, it might be easier if I just start from the beginning." Desmond sighed and set his burger down. "So do you know that pharmaceutical company Abstergo? They developed this machine that allowed you to like… it would look into your DNA, or genetic memory or whatever, and then you’d experience what your ancestors did. Like, fully immersive in-their-shoes type of shit; you see what they see, feel what they feel, say what they say, do what they do…" His eyes flicked once more to the pair.

Altaïr was trying his best to translate the gist of the conversation for Malik, though his gaps in knowledge on modern phrases were slowing him down. Not to mention he really didn’t have a knack for keeping up with the whole process. Malik, meanwhile, was irritable and a tad lost. He kept his icy gaze pinned on Desmond who quickly cleared his throat and looked away.

"So, um, anyway, it just so happens Abstergo’s a front for this ancient order of Templars that want to impose world peace by taking control of free will. You know, typical shadowy evil corporation stuff. They were looking for something that got lost at some point in history and it just so happens that a bunch of people in my bloodline had a lot to do with it. One day I was happily working as a bartender in NYC, the next I was kidnapped and forced into their machine. They made me take a joy ride in the memories of great grandpa Alty over here.” 

Altaïr paused his translation to raise an eyebrow. “‘Alty’?” he asked acerbically. 

Malik, meanwhile, redirected his own look that held a whole world of meanings at his partner. “Ancestor, huh? So, I suppose this means you’ll be having kids. ”

Altaïr whipped his head around, eyes wide and cheeks tinted. “That’s what you focus on? Seriously? ”

Malik leaned around him to bore his dark eyes into Desmond. “Tell me more.”

“Oh were you… yoouuu guys aren’t at that point yet, huh?” The young man shrunk away from the pair before he winced and nodded. “I mean, yeah, uh, I guess if time hasn’t been fucked up, he’ll, uh, eventually have children. Two that I know of,” he said, switching to Arabic.

“Two.” Malik turned back to Altaïr with raised brows. “Congratulations, brother.”

The Winchesters glanced back and forth between them, suddenly feeling very much like they were intruding on a personal matter. Sam thought he had pegged the pair as being somewhat… involved, though maybe that wasn’t the case after all. Meanwhile Dean felt a little betrayed, though he couldn’t pinpoint why. 

Sam cleared his throat to try and dispel the tension in the air before things could get more awkward. “So, uh, that’s- that’s um, interesting, and intrusive, I guess. But um, what- what does this have to do with the Bleeding Effect?”

“Great question!” Desmond said a little too loudly. “I was getting there. So I was stuck as Abstergo’s guinea pig, right? Eventually I was busted out by assassins—from the now times, that is. But little known fact: They're assholes too! They had their own homemade Animus and I had to keep going in it and keep living through different ancestors' memories over and over and over for months while we were on the run.”

He paused with a heavy sigh and rubbed hand down his arm, staring off at a clump of grass but not really seeing it. He sneered.

“Turns out too much time in the Animus can cause this… disorder. The memories, the lives, they start to, y’know, bleed into your real life—the Bleeding Effect. It can be useful, supposedly. I picked up a bunch of skills and languages really quickly because of it. But then there’s the ghosts, the- the shadows of people and voices from the past, that overlap with the now, and over time it just grows stronger. It gets to the point that it’s like you’re experiencing the Animus without even being hooked into it. At some point you stop being able to tell when and who you are.”

Desmond seemed to cloud over partially then. He set his forearm on the picnic table and pushed up the sleeve of his grey hoodie, revealing a bracer with a complicated contraption on it. Dean vaguely registered it as familiar before remembering he’d seen Altaïr wearing something similar when they’d swapped out his robes for street clothes. Idly Desmond poked at the sheathed blade. “Sometimes it’s hallucinations, other times I just straight up become someone else. I don’t remember what memories are mine most of the time. I’m lucky to go a few days in a row as Desmond now.”

Dean nodded as he leaned forward. “Yeah. That’s tough, man.”

Desmond glared at the older Winchester with tired annoyance. “I know you don’t believe me, but I swear to god I’m not lying. I don’t have any control.”

“Hey, I believe you! Shit, we’ve had our fair share of hauntings.” Dean raised his hands defensively. “By actual ghosts, usually, but not always. Sam got haunted by Satan once.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “I thought we agreed never to bring that up again.”

“Vaffanculo!” Desmond slammed his fist on the table, sending wrappers scattering to the grass and the others jumping. “Stop making fun of me! Do you know what it’s like to not remember who the fuck you are? To wake up every day not knowing where you are or what you did? To have the parts you do remember make you go insane? Fuck, yesterday I 100% believed I was in Renaissance Italy chatting up god damn Leonardo da Vinci in a gas station and had the cops called on me. Last week I almost killed a guy because he wore a red jacket and I’d been deep in the Revolutionary War for the past twelve hours!”

He spun and directed his rage on Altaïr. “Because of assholes like you -" he jabbed his finger in the assassin’s chest, "I don't get to have a life of my own! I had to literally sacrifice myself to some bullshit gods to stop the world from ending and for some reason everything went to shit anyway and I didn’t even get to stay dead!"

The man finally stopped. His breathing was heavy and there was an unhealthy rattle to his chest. The others were quiet, staring, waiting for… they weren't sure. Waiting for what he would do next.

Desmond buried his face in his hands and scratched at his scalp harshly.

Surprisingly, Malik was the one who moved towards Desmond. He stood up from the bench, reached past Altaïr and paused, a bit hesitant, before pinching Desmond's ear between his thumb and forefinger. 

Desmond flinched and slapped away the hand, though he froze after seeing who it was.

Malik met his eyes and spoke in a gruff, admonishing tone. A short, single phrase.

There was a pause.

Like a cold engine turning on for the first time in winter, a noise bubbled haphazardly from Desmond's mouth before turning over into laughter. A bit wheezy and disbelieving, but laughter nonetheless. The corner of Malik’s mouth twitched and he walked away. Altaïr even cracked a small smile, though it was quickly hidden as he got up to follow.

"What did he say?" Sam asked.

Desmond shook his head. A light of affection twinkled in his eyes. "It won't make sense to you but he basically told me to stop being such a whiny novice."

"You're right. Real hilarious," Dean mumbled. “That’s nice and all, but can we back up to you sacrificing yourself to stop the world from ending?”

As suddenly as it came Desmond’s chuckle was gone. He grimaced. “I… Yeah. Boy this is gonna sound crazier than the other shit.

“Basically there was this solar flare that was gonna wipe out the world as we know it, and this civilization that existed before humans called the Isu knew about it, so they made a device to shield the earth from the worst of it. But there was also this fun feature where using it would kill you. I knew the warnings and all that, but it was either die and have things be kinda bad for a bit or have a massive cataclysmic event nearly end everything. I figured there’s people better than me left to make sure things don’t get too terrible and I’d get the added bonus of not having to deal with the Bleeding Effect anymore. I did not expect to wake up again and witness back-to-back disasters.”

“Yeah, that was our bad.”

Sam shot a withering look at his brother, while Desmond looked ready to slap him. The hunter curled his lip and snorted.

“What? You thought you caused the apocalypse? We spent like a year trying to stop this bitch Lilith from kick starting it only to end up killing her which turned out to be the key to making it happen anyway! Then we had to fight off angels and demons trying to get us to be the meat-puppets for Michael and Lucifer’s pissing contest long enough to shove both of those bastards into Lucifer’s cage in Hell. You’re welcome by the way.”

“I can’t tell if you’re serious, or…”

“Alright, how about we not take a trip down memory lane,” Sam interjected. “We all fucked up the world in some way or another, let’s just leave it at that and be amazed at how fate brings people like us together, yeah?”

Desmond rolled his eyes. “Sure, whatever. It did make it kinda convenient to keep my being alive a secret from Abstergo.”

“Yeah, I bet,” Dean half-laughed in agreement. He nodded his chin towards the pair of assassins chatting some distance away. “What’re they doing?”

Desmond looked up and shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably talking about Altaïr’s future babies? Man if they get to return to their time, they are gonna flip when Malik has a son eventually, too.”

Sam crossed his arms. “Really? Both of them have kids? Huh. I kinda thought they were… together. Like, together-together.”

Dean stared blankly at his brother. Sam raised his eyebrows.

“Like a couple, Dean.”

“Oh.” Dean’s brow furrowed as he nodded. “Really? I mean it’s not any of our business, but if they end up with kids then I guess-”

“No, they are.”

Both Sam and Dean whipped their heads toward Desmond but he was busy finishing off the last burger and reclining against the edge of the table. He waved a hand dismissively. “Altaïr has no problem with people knowing about their relationship. If he had his way I’m pretty sure he’d be shouting it from the rooftops.”

“O-oh.”

“Malik’s pretty paranoid about who gets to know, though—for good reason. If the wrong people find out then best case scenario, one of them gets stripped of their leadership on the grounds of favoritism, which would be Malik ‘cause he’s second in command. Worst case? Castration and death.” Desmond drew his thumb across his neck and stuck his tongue out in an exaggeration of a corpse. Then he hesitated as he realized he just outed the pair. “You guys aren’t going to be assholes about it, are you?”

“No, no,” Dean assured. He was staring at the two of them like a fascinating puzzle. “Love whoever you wanna love and all that.”

“Sorry, you said Malik’s second in command? Command of what?” Sam asked curiously.

“The Assassin Brotherhood.” Desmond wiped crumbs from his lips. He was already disappointed at his food being gone but pleased he’d had the best meal in a long time. “Altaïr is the Grand Master. Dude’s in charge of pretty much all assassins.” He gestured at the hooded figure.

Sam tapped his fingers on the table, reeling from the revelation that of the two it was the ill-behaved reprobate that was the big shot. He didn’t fully believe it. “Huh.”

Suddenly Dean stood up. It drew the attention of the other two and he seemed just as confused as to why he got to his feet out of nowhere, but he shook it off and squared his shoulders before heading towards the couple. Daddy didn’t raise no quitter. 

“Hey, John Wick,” Dean called. Altaïr and Malik turned around, the taller one quirking a brow. Dean directed his gaze to Altaïr as he jerked his head towards the Impala. “Gotta talk to you for a sec.”

Malik looked up at Altaïr inquisitively but the man just shrugged, equally lost on what Dean could possibly want. He squeezed Malik’s shoulder and followed the older Winchester to the car. Malik watched them go, then eventually sighed and returned to the picnic table.

The descendant, Desmond, was it? He seemed nervous with the way he was bouncing his leg like a bird’s heartbeat. To Malik’s surprise he addressed him directly.

“I have to apologize to you. I just told these two something without thinking…”

At the car Dean popped open the trunk. He didn’t bother lifting up the secret compartment and instead pulled out two large department store bags.

“Here. I kept your guys’ outfits back here so you don’t lose them before heading back.”

Altaïr accepted the bags with surprise. “Thank you. I… I honestly don’t know when we’re going to be able to return, however. It was an accident with the Apple that brought us here.”

“Ha. What, did you drop it or something?”

The purse-lipped silence was very telling.

“Right. Well, uh, that’s- I’m sure whenever Cas gets a minute he can help figure it out so you two can go home.”

“That would be appreciated,” Altaïr said with a grateful nod. He tilted his head as he studied Dean’s face. “Is there something else you wish to talk about?”

“No, I- well, maybe. Yeah.” Dean ran a hand through his short hair nervously. “Yeah. Um. Listen, I don’t mean this to come off weird, but it probably will anyway, but you- you and Malik… You’re together, right? Like a couple?”

“Yes, Malik and I are lovers.”

His forwardness threw Dean off. “Wow you just... came right out there and said it, huh? Zero hesitation.”

“Why would I not? I am not ashamed of it, and neither is Malik. We love each other. He has his reasons for wanting us to keep it a secret, which I respect, but it seems like here,” he spread his arms to indicate everywhere, “those reasons are not a threat to us. Here we have nothing to lose besides each other.”

Dean let that sink in for a moment. They were just strangers visiting a place where no one knew them. Being open about their relationship would probably have affected how some people treat them, if they cared about that sort of thing, which it seemed Altaïr at least didn’t, though that could’ve just been because he was a reckless idiot. But ultimately it had little consequence to their actual lives 800 years ago. Time and distance was a hell of a freedom. Dean found that he envied them for it.

“…You’ve got a point. I mean there’s plenty of people now that are, y’know, not hiding anything, and there’s nothing wrong with that!” Dean shifted uncomfortably. “That’s, uh, not exactly, what I wanted to talk about though. Um. How- how do you… did you…” He flailed and sputtered, trying desperately to find the words to express his jumbled thoughts. Finally he blurted: “So you’re going to have a kid with a woman?”

It was Altaïr’s turn to be blindsided. He stared in utter confusion for a long moment. “I presume so?” he slowly answered. “That is generally how children are made.”

Dean made empty half-gestures. “Yeah, I know! I know how kids are made! But what I’m saying is, if you- if you like men, and Malik is… uh…”

Realization dawned on Altaïr then. A small bemused smirk tugged at his lips. “Well barring some life-altering event, I’m assuming my wife is going to be the one carrying the child, not him.”

“Your… wife?”

Altaïr nodded. “Yes, my wife. Maria.”

“Does she know you’re-”

“I am not unfaithful. Maria is my wife and Malik is my lover. They are more than aware of each other, and that they both hold my heart.”

The poor hunter’s mind seemed to fry then. “But, if you… Are you attracted to her?”

Altaïr crossed his arms. Thankfully he didn’t seem offended. Instead he, infuriatingly, seemed entirely too amused by Dean’s line of questions. “Yes. I find her incredibly attractive.”

“And Malik?”

“Yes. Him too.”

“That can happen?”

The assassin laughed then. Dean flushed in hot embarrassment, but Altaïr clapped him on the arm. “My friend, you have shown me that mystical beings are alive and lurking amongst humanity, and you hunt these hidden creatures for a living, yet you question something as simple as whether a person can be attracted to men and women at the same time. It’s so…” Altaïr waved a hand, failing to find the word he was searching for amidst barely-contained giggles. “I will never shut up about this, I hope you understand. This is going to amuse me well into my grave.”

He straightened and took a breath, but the smile didn’t leave his face. “I am delighted to inform you that it very much can happen. Enthusiastically so. If your attraction to women was making you doubt your care for the angel, then know that it’s not the obstacle you thought it was.”

Dean stiffened. He opened his mouth to protest but Altaïr winked and strode off, bags of clothes in hand.