I'd love to change the world
But I don't know what to do
So I'll leave it up to you

Before Dean can even get downstairs - maybe he could have breakfast, or possibly bash his head repeatedly against the kitchen cabinets until his brain leaks out - both options have their appeal, to be perfectly honest - Gabriel appears on the landing and blocks his way.

And Dean has to stare, because -

Well.

Apparently this is what angels do at night, since they don’t need to sleep: they conjure new clothes out of thin air, and they fuck around (a still of Cas braiding Gabriel’s hair pops into Dean’s mind, and he squashes it back down). Because, yeah, no more black, no more suits: in honour of the end of the world, Gabriel is now wearing jeans and a red t-shirt (Dean glances at it, does a double-take, but, no, that’s not Che Guevara, it’s Freddy Mercury - surely, even worse, but Dean can’t put his finger on why, exactly) and he looks, if possible, even more of a dick. Why is he even bothering?

This, Dean suddenly realizes, is precisely what he always found annoying about Gabriel: the constant, tiresome pretending. The guy is not human; will never be human. And yet he likes playing house, and he likes it a bit too much - eating, changing his clothes, taking the time to get to know people (usually for evil, evil reasons) - Dean has never met another angel quite like that. Which is not to say that some of them can’t display human-like behaviours and emotions. After all, even Cas -

Dean clenches his jaw, realizes he’s been staring, looks away with an annoyed huff.

“What now?” he asks, as rudely as he can manage it.

“What did you do?”

Gabriel seems genuinely curious. Dean has no idea what he means. Definitely not. Zero. Zilch.

Because, let him bloody try - let Gabriel try to pin this on him, and Dean can finally find out what the inside of an angel’s skull actually looks like.

“I'm not in the mood, man.”

The archangel frowns (the flaming sword above his shoulder flickers into existence for a second), then he steps closer, and then closer still, until he has Dean pinned against the wall. Because, well, this You're in charge politics of his is really working out.

“I don't think you realize,” he says, very quietly, “how close he came to killing you last night.”

“I thought I was dead already,” Dean almost snarls, desperately trying to ignore the usual, unsettling waves of strength and otherness coming off Gabriel like laser beams.

“Oh, I don’t mean - this. I meant, destroying your soul. Utterly and completely. He came very close indeed, you know. A hair’s breadth,” he adds, raising one hand up, right to Dean’s face, and moving in, as though to stroke his head, then letting it fall again without actually touching him.

“Yeah, well, that's me. Born under a lucky star,” Dean replies, even more aggressively, his heart beating very fast, and know he’s shutting off his brain, barely managing to keep it from exploding, actually, because if this is true, if Cas - what the hell? “And how would you even know?”

Gabriel smirks.

“Oh, please. I could feel it, bro. The bond between angels - it's difficult to explain. Humans do not have the mental capacity to understand it.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s the truth.”

“So, you guys have, what, a collective brain or something? Like bees?”

Dean tries to edge past Gabriel, but he stops in his tracks when the archangel looks up at him again, and the sheer surprise in his amber/honey eyes is so plain Dean feels downright offended.

“What? I watch tv, you know.”

“I thought you watched porn.”

“Yeah, that too. Sometimes documentaries about bees. Now can I go?”

Gabriel frowns again, moves out of his way.

“Just tread carefully around him, that's all,” he adds, meaningfully, because that who he is - Mr Mystery from Last Word City.

.:.

Once Madison falls asleep, Sam relaxes against the tree trunk. His hand is still in her hair, but now he stops moving his fingers through it. He doesn’t want to wake her.

The whole thing is surreal; insane, even. That he should meet her here, and this weird temporal disturbance - caused, Sam feels, by the Darkness: what else could be so powerful as to upset a place created by God himself? - which made it so much easier for them to reconnect. Not that he’d ever stopped thinking about her, not completely. There was always something there; she was special. Sam had known the moment he’d first met her. Thank God she’d taken matters into her own hands and had had her way with him, because Dean is right, Sam is -

- not thinking about Dean. Not now. He just can’t.

Instead, he looks up at the sky, such as it is. A velvety canopy of dark grey and black, without stars, without a moon. It’s surprisingly peaceful, though. Sam breathes in the soft smell of resin and allows his eyes to wander, to follow the patterns of the branches in the dark, a pattern as graceful and random as Enochian symbols.

Despite the life he’s led, Sam hasn’t slept out in the open many times. In fact, he’d never done it until the age of twelve - he still remembers, with a kind of fond embarrassment, how he ended up edging closer and closer to Dean in the darkness, a flickering green wood fire their only source of light, until Dean had given up and allowed himself to be hugged. How he'd sighed, and at the same time hugged his kid brother back; his quiet words, barely there ("Come on, you're not a freak, man").

One of his best childhood memories, and it shouldn't have happened at all, because, well, the whole thing was supposed to be a Dean-free sleepover, actually, an honest-to-God, perfectly normal activity. Not that Sam had ever been to a sleepover before, but it was Guy Rutherson’s birthday, and he'd been invited. Guy was popular and cool and everything Sam was not. He was so cool, in fact, with his torn-up jeans and eyebrow ring, that nobody ever made fun of his ridiculous name. As middle school goes, a miracle.

He also hated Sam. A lot. Because, who knows. Sam had thought about it many times since then, annoyed at himself for being unable to let it go; and he had realized, at the ripe age of twenty-five, that his memory of Guy wasn’t all that clear-cut. His brain was tricking him, because Sam clearly remembered Guy pushing him down the stairs (but that school in Livingston, Montana, was built on a single level); he remembered Guy tripping him in the middle of a gigantic, yellow-tiled cafeteria (again, not the one in Livingston); he remembered Guy ratting him out to Mrs Cole for bringing a knife to class (didn’t she teach in Arizona, though? Sam had been mad at her for confiscating the knife and making a fuss about it, but, of course, she’d been right). No, it was impossible, all those years later, to tell where Guy finished and where all those others nameless bullies began; some of them he had outsmarted, others had been beaten up by Dean; others still, Guy among them, had come out on top.

And that, thinks Sam, stretching his legs carefully, so Madison won’t wake up, doesn’t matter at all. Guy had been twelve as well; he deserved to be forgiven. Which is what Sam hasn’t quite managed yet, because, well -

Because Sam had always, always longed to just fit in. And when Guy had invited him to his birthday-slash-sleepover, Sam had been overjoyed. He'd been too naive to question Guy's motives; instead, he’d bugged Dean about shelling out the money for a gift (Dad had been checking out a haunting two towns over), and he must have been very convincing, or very annoying, because when Dean had come to pick him up from school the next day there had been a wrapped-up package in the Impala’s passenger seat.

“It’s not a doll, is it?” he’d said, and Dean had rolled his eyes and drove him to the Ruthersons’ house.

Sam can still remember it now. His joy, his excitement. He’d been a bit scared, too. In movies, these situations seemed to involve horror films and stolen beer (Sam could cope with both); but what if the others started to discuss girls? He’d never even kissed anyone. Surely, that was not normal? Surely everyone else, those kids with normal lives and friends, surely they’d done things? What if they’d done everything? And what if they wanted to know what he’d done?

He’d been so preoccupied with the issue he hadn’t even realized the engine had stopped running until Dean had asked him, in his I’m not concerned, you’re just being annoying voice, “Everything okay, Sammy? You still want to go?”

“I - yes.”

“Okay.”

His twelve-year old self had put his hand on the door handle, looked at the Ruthersons’ house through the window, and even now, Sam can still see it, can still remember that moment like it was yesterday, remembers in scarily vivid detail how hard his heart had been beating, how the placid white house had suddenly looked as threatening as a vampire’s nest.

“What if they ask - you know,” Sam had blurted out, looking anywhere but at his brother.

“About Dad?” Dean had said, after a short pause, and well, Sam hadn’t even been thinking about that, but, of course, what about Dad?

Just as he’d felt the beginning of a fully-fledged panic attack, Dean had grabbed his shoulder, forced him to turn around.

“Dad is a trucker, remember?” he’d said, slowly, reassuringly. “He’s coming home in a few days. And mom is dead.”

“I know that.”

“No, I meant -”

Something had flickered on Dean’s face, there and gone in a second.

“- and if they ask about me, do you remember how old I am?”

“Twenty-one,” had said Sam, obediently.

This had been the standard lie for a couple of years now, because Dad had been gone for longer and longer periods and Dean often found himself talking on the phone with concerned teachers (“Are you sure your brother can’t stay until the end of the school year? It is most disruptive for children to -”) and school nurses (“Sam fainted this morning, told me he’s forgotten to have breakfast. Could you please make sure -”). Sam had always been on the wrong end of the line during these conversations, trapped in some falsely cheerful office with dolphins posters on the walls, both desperate to know what his brother was saying and trying to disappear into his chair. He’d never understood how the hell Dean could get away with the lie. To him, Dean looked grown-up and a bit dangerous, but still, no way he looked or sounded twenty-one. People over twenty were old.

But Dean was able to charm people as easily as he could breathe; maybe he was just nice, or maybe he was a born con man, Sam had found himself thinking, more than once, in his most uncharitable moments.

“That’s right.”

“And what if - if they want to know about girls?” Sam had finally asked, when Dean had started to fidget.

He still remembers it - how his own voice had dropped down to a mortified whisper, and the small, inevitable snort of laughter that Dean, to his credit, had immediately stifled.

“What about them?”

“Never mind.”

Sam had climbed out of the car, the gift in his hands, determined to put as much distance between himself and his brother as humanly possible. Because, well, according to Mr Lee, his biology teacher, nobody had ever died from embarrassment, but Sam hadn’t been keen to stay and find out if that was actually true.

“Sammy,” Dean had called out, swtiching to older brother mode, and Sam, of course, had had stopped walking.

Those were Dad’s orders: when he was away, Dean was in charge. Whatever Dean wanted, Dean got. If Dean said Jump, Sam better ask How high?, or else. And since Dean was mostly fair and Sam had seen firsthand what happened when he disregarded his orders (once he’d decided putting salt on all the windowsills was a stupid thing to do: big mistake), he always went along with it. And so he’d walked back to the car, his head down, doing his best to hide his angry blush.

“Here, take this,” Dean had said, pushing the motel’s card in his hand. “You call if you need me to pick you up, okay?”

“Okay.”

“And you don’t let them push you around.”

“Okay.”

“And you have fun, for bloody once.”

“Okay.”

“And if they ask, you tell them pussy smells like fish and tastes like raspberries.”

“Okay - wait, what?”

“Have fun, Sammy.”

And Dean had driven off, just like that, because Mrs Rutherson had come out of the house to greet Sam, and, while Dean could romance and bullshit anyone from the right end of a phone, close up he still looked sixteen going on fourteen, and definitely not twenty-one. Definitely not old enough to take care of his baby brother on his own.

Madison shifts a little, and Sam loses track of his thoughts for a moment. She is very warm against him, and she makes these little noises as she sleeps, like she’s saying something, but in a language of her own invention. Sam moves his hand a little so he can stroke her neck with his thumb, and he closes his eyes. This forest is much different from the one he and Dean ended up in all those years ago, he thinks, lazily, and he tries to pinpoint why, exactly. Aside from the fact that this is Purgatory and probably a figment of his imagination, that is.

It’s the noise, he realizes, after another second. Aside from Madison’s adorable gurgles, everything is silent. There is no wind, no bird pottering about on the branches above them, not even a bug disturbing the pine needles-covered floor.

This perfect silence should be conductive to sleep, but somehow it really isn’t. Sam opens his eyes again and sighs, looking up at the sky, imagining he’s seeing some sign of an early dawn and focusing his attention on what he should do, exactly, when Madison wakes up and asks him about All My Children again.

.:.

Dean is still fuming when he gets down to the kitchen, and seeing Cas there, standing next to the table in that awkward robot stance he used to have, does nothing to calm him down.

“Any news?” he barks, then catches himself and forces out a smile when he sees Hunter looking up at him, a spoon in his mouth (the wrong side up, by the look of it), and milk trickling down his chin.

Now, some people (mostly women, according reality tv and daytime shows) are blessed with the ability to love any child they see and pronounce him or her beautiful and precious as soon as the thing so much as breathes. Dean is not one of those people. Sure, he knows how to talk to kids, but he likes kids the same way he likes everybody else - he thinks they’re twisty little fuckers, but, hey, who’s he to judge?

Hunter, though, is not a twisty little fucker, and this is why Dean is displeased by the fact that the only place left at the breakfast table is right in front of him (also in front of Cas, who’s standing right behind the child; but Cas doesn’t count). No, Hunter is like this parody of a Disneyland ad child - curly blond hair, huge blue eyes, and - goddammit - those fat little fingers all kids get at some point, before their bodies figure out they need to be growing upwards, and not sideways.

And now Hunter has lost interest in Dean. He’s taken the spoon out of his mouth (it had been the wrong side up, Dean just knew it) and is staring down at the cereal bowl in front of him like it contains the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything - some part of him is probably considering picking up the spoon again and actually using it like God intended, but Dean can see the exact second Hunter decides that no, because why should he, really, and at that point -

Ah, fuck it.

“Here, let me do that for you, buddy,” says Dean, dropping down on the stool and accepting the inevitable.

The child frowns in displeasure when Dean picks up the abandoned spoon, but still opens his mouth obediently when said spoon comes back towards him, now filled with sugary goodness.

“Good morning to you too,” says Jody, a strange look on her face.

Dean glares at her, daring her to comment in any way, and she shrugs, pushes a sheet of paper to him from across the table.

“You need to have a look at this. A ready-made checklist in case of apocalypse, if you want. We call it Protocol 5.”

Dean glances at it, then has to focus his attention back to Hunter. The thing is an actual checklist, though. He’s managed to read point 1 (Allow 10 liters per person per day) and notice the existence of point 1a (drinking and hygiene) and point 1b (domestic use). Fucking hell. He can’t believe he and Sam never thought of this. It’s not like they don’t have secret codes, after all - they have tons of them - movie quotes to use in case of arrest, specific questions to ascertain demonic possession, a whole string of danger words and gestures (werewolf, vampire, witch, police, FBI, village idiot, hide, duck, run) - but they never went as far as writing down an actual apocalypse checklist. And, apparently, Donna and Jody did.

This is why women should run the world, Dean thinks, distractedly, reaching out and disentangling the spoon from Hunter’s chubby little fingers.

“Next time, you can stay here with them,” mutters Krissy, amused, as she pours herself a second cup of coffee.

“Yeah, like you don’t like it,” says Alex. “Must be fun to sit on the carpet and play with dolls while other people are digging up flowerbeds to -”

“Yeah, meant to say, good job with that.”

Claire’s voice sounds exactly like Dean feels. There is this dulcet, Fuck with me today and I’ll end you undertone which makes the temperature drop five degrees.

“Thank you. I thought so myself.”

“I think she meant it sucked.”

“Yeah. Because it really did.”

“It still kept your boyfriend out, right?”

A clatter from Dean’s right. Claire stands up, leaves the room. Dean looks around, searching for Jesse, but the kid is still sunken deep in the chair closest to the empty fireplace. He’s reading, or pretending to, and doesn’t lower the book, though his ears turn a bit red.

“Alex -”

“I know, I know. Addendum 8, subparagraph 3. Jesus,” sighs Alex, and as she turns, she sees Cas’ eyes on her. “Sorry,” she mumbles, slightly more sincerely, and then she disappears after Claire.

“What was that about?” asks Dean, and he turns the page over with his free hand, looking for point 8.3.

“When the world is ending, don’t squabble over stupid things,” says Cas, completely out of the blue.

It’s the first time Dean’s heard him talking since the night before, and his familiar sandpaper voice only reinforces his last, nightmarish memory of it.

I can love you no more.

“And how would you know?”

“I read it. Just now.”

So, well, he does answer when spoken to. Good to know (he still isn’t looking at Dean, though). And of course he can read a handwritten document upside-down, even if he’s standing more than ten feet away. Because, well, Cas is not human, never will be, and Dean would do well to remember it.

But Dean can’t. His eyes hesitate on Cas’ graceful hands, on the way his fingers are lightly touching the fabric of his coat -another stupid angel habit of his - Sam even asked him about it once, and he got a very complicated answer back - then move upward, to the stupid blue tie, always a bit askew, to the shirt - one button is undone, and a bit of skin shows, pale and unmarked - Dean licks his lips without noticing what he’s doing, looks at Cas’ own lips, his straight nose, his eyes - and he finds Cas looking back at him.

“Lolly,” says Hunter, drawing Dean’s attention back to his sugary cereals, and Dean feeds him another spoonful, his eyes darting up again, lightly, to see Cas is still staring at him.

“If you want your own lolly, wait for your turn,” Dean says, his Kiss me I’m Irish Tourette kicking in, and he feels ridiculously vindicated when he sees the angel frown.

“Yes, well,” says Jody, a bit too pointedly, “That’s exactly what it means. If there’s ten of us left, the first rule is to get along with one another.”

“Sounds reasonable,” says Gabriel, demurely, and Dean almost has an heart attack, because, really - the guy needs a fucking bell.

“What else is in there, then?” he asks, trying to cover his annoyance.

“Quite a bit, but we’re not sure those things will actually work in the real world.”

“I started writing that years ago, as a joke,” says Donna, swatting Krissy’s hand away from the coffee pot and pushing a glass of orange juice towards her instead. “Big fan of disaster movies.”

“I’m sure there’s a lot in there we can use,” starts Dean, and then he’s distracted again: Hunter’s had enough of breakfast and is now trying to negotiate his way out of the chair.

Which results in said chair tipping back, then coming down on the floor with a soft noise. And, of course, the fleeting look on Hunter’s face (blind panic, exhilaration, a dogged determination to try the thing again) makes Dean think of Sam, and that is stupid, because he barely remembers what Sam looked like at that age.

And Dean can’t think about Sam. He just can’t. Not now.

No, a good plan for now is keep Hunter alive for the next fifteen seconds - the kid is starting to tip the chair again, and Cas is just standing there like a freaking pod person -

“Think you could suspend your hatred for humanity for a second, Cas?”

But Dean’s acid rebuttal was unnecessary. Cas had already noticed Hunter’s intentions. Without speaking, he picks the child up just as the chair is tilting over, and Hunter turns around in the angel’s grip, snakes his fat little arms around his neck.

“Birdie,” he says, happily.

This does not make Dean feel better. Not at all.

“So, what should we do?” asks Jody, bless her.

“It looks like you have everything pretty much figured out,” Dean replies, clearing his throat.

He looks down at the paper, turns it over, reads it a second time. Lots of good stuff, right here, he thinks, as he’s about to voice the thought out loud when he makes the mistake of actually looking up. Everyone is staring at him in an expectant way. Looks like a vague comment is not going to cut it here.

“What?” he says, and then he adds, in disbelief, “You want me to decide?”

Because he can’t do that. He can’t. He’s not good at making decisions - he always fucks things up - gets people killed. What Jody and Donna have built here in a few short months is already miles better than anything he’s ever even dreamed about, and he can’t - if he fucks it up -

“Dean,” says Jody, loudly, “Can I talk to you for a second?”

“I - sure.”

Dean follows her out of the room in a daze. To his surprise, they end up in the laundry room.

“What? It’s private,” says Jody, repressively, closing the door behind them; then she reaches out, a bit distractedly, to straighten a tiny kid’s t-shirt hanging on a wire. “Plus, this room just became officially useless. Without power, I think we’ll have to move all washing-related activities to the upstairs tub.”

“Right,” says Dean, his mind still on the scary paper on the kitchen table. “Is there no power at all, then? Don’t you have a generator, or something?”

“Dean -”

“I’ve seen a couple of cars out back. Maybe we can figure something out.”

“Dean -”

“Or maybe it’s temporary. It’s not like this Darkness thing has an instruction manual, after all.”

Dean is only forced out of his ramblings when Jody walks up to him and grabs his arms.

“Dean - I hate to say this. I really do. But -” Jody takes a deep breath. “- you need to man up. And fast.”

Dean just looks at her. It’s been years since he’s heard these words out loud - no, lately they’ve mostly been nesting inside his head like diseased, filthy things, infesting childhood memories and making him feel guiltier than ever. Which is unfair, but, well.

“Jody -”

“Dean, people are freaking out. I know it must look organized to you,” she goes on, hurriedly, “The house, the kids, the toys in front of the fireplace - but it’s a front. It’s all a front. The truth is -”

And Dean knows what she’s about to say, doesn’t he, because things are never perfect, and forget perfect, things are never good, period. He’s let himself believe for ten minutes there could be a painless way out of this, and he shouldn’t have. Goddammit.

“- we are terrified. Alex is still weak, Krissy - Krissy hides it well, but sometimes I’m afraid - she seems to like killing, Dean, and I’m not sure -”

Of course Krissy likes killing. Dean remembers what that was like. He remembers an easier, more honest life - taking down monsters and enjoying the job. Black and white.

“And Claire, there’s something off about her. Which is normal, poor kid, with her mom gone and all. But still, there’s no time for that. Not anymore.”

Perhaps Jody feels Dean drifting away from her, because she suddenly closes her hands a bit tighter on his forearms.

“Dean, they’re kids. And me and Donna - we’re doing what we can, but we weren’t born into this life the way you were. We don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong.”

“And you think I do?”

“I think we need you to,” she replies. “I think we’re all dead if you lose focus - I think we have three supernatural beings in this house right now who are just as close to losing it as we are, and I think they could easily kill us all if they do, and I know I can’t control any of them. But you can.”

Dean opens his mouth to say that she’s exaggerating, to protest that Cas, Cas wouldn’t, not ever, but then he remembers the concerned, earnest look on Gabriel’s face and closes it again.

“I feel a right bitch, asking you to do this. I know what you -”

Jody’s right thumb moves on his arm, a small, affectionate gesture which conveys what she can’t say out loud - the night before, and that moment of weakness, Dean breaking down in sobs - and it is only then that Dean realizes Jody doesn’t know him all that well, in the end. She’s always seen him as this strong, unflappable bastard; she’s never seen that other, truer, side of him - all those feelings of doubt, of guilt, of rage, even, because it’s bloody unfair, all of it. Before last night, she’s never known how weak he really is. Not that he can blame her for that. With Sam gone, there’s only one person alive who knows the real him. A person who’s now wishing he didn’t, that is; a person who probably erased Dean’s whole existence from his memory. A person who’s not even a person at all.

“No, I get it,” he says, a bit roughly.

“It’s unfair, I get that, and I’m sorry,” she says, and Dean knows she means all of it - her little boy dying, twice, and the mess their lives are, and everything else.

Without thinking, he takes a step forward and hugs her, and he feels her hug him back, furiously tight, so tight he can’t breathe. It feels damn good, and for a single second of sheer insanity Dean thinks that maybe they can actually make it through this, whatever it is.

“Did I ever tell you about Heaven?” he says, and he hates how his voice gets mellow and pleasant, because this is his con voice, because he has no idea, really, about what the Darkness really means, if any of them will ever be allowed to die, if Heaven is still open for business; but this is what Jody asked him to do, take control, and Dean has been doing it since he was four years old, and he can fucking do it now. “It’s different for everyone. It’s whatever makes you happy. So you're right - we’re doing this, okay? We’re going to fight because it’s the right thing to do, but even if we lose - Jody, even if we lose, you’re going straight up, right? You’re going to see your kid again. So it’s fine, really. Everything is going to be fine.”

God, he’s such a bastard. Talk about promises he can’t keep.

Jody lets him go, takes a step back. Her eyes are a bit wet, but nothing major. She’s one tough lady, and she sure deserves better than him. Some Fearless Leader he’s turning out to be.

“About that,” she says; then she dabs at her eyes impatiently, and her voice drops to a whisper. “Can we really trust them?”

“Who? The angels?”

“And Jesse. And Crowley.”

Her mouth curves downwards, and, bloody again, Dean feels like the worst person on earth. Crowley tried to kill her, for Chrissakes.

“We have no choice,” he says, curtly. “And they can be - decent. In their own way. Just keep your eyes wide open.”

Dean sees her taking another breath, preparing to say something else, and all of a sudden he knows what she’s about to ask, knows he doesn’t want to hear it. Not now, not ever. It was bad enough to have Donna comfort him, and even bloody Gabriel - he’s not about to get into it with someone who can actually force the truth out of him. No way.

“Come on. Let’s go. Time to get to work.”

He smiles at her, opens the door. Jody takes one big, steadying breath, and then they go back to the kitchen together, find that everyone is actually there. Claire and Alex are sitting side by side again, Jesse has dragged himself to Jody’s chair, which is closest to Donna and farthest from Claire, Gabriel has conjured up a huge platter of apple fritters (Dean catches the tail end of a conversation he’s having with Krissy: ‘Can’t you do anything savoury?’ - ‘It’s not about ability, it's about will’ - ‘Well, thanks a lot.’ - ‘Hey, it’s fruits. It’s healthy.’) and a freaking bouncy castle for the kids. Dean glances at the huge-ass thing, does a double-take when he realizes Cas is sitting in front of it, still wearing his stupid trenchcoat, then shrugs and drops down on his stool again.

He's in charge. He's in control.

Right.

Dean grabs a fritter and wolves it down in two bites, trying to delay the inevitable.

Because, well, now would be a good time to decide things. Or, rather: now would be a good time for Dean to decide things.

Trying to get in the mood, Dean breathes in and does a quick headcount with his sugar-coated fingers.

There’s eight of them at the table. Good. They’ve saved the world with less, thinks Dean, and then feels Gabriel’s eyes on him, turns to look at him, finds the archangel smirking at him.

Right.

Stop reading my goddamn mind, he thinks, as loud as he can, and is rewarded by Gabriel’s startled blink, by his smirk turning into an (unconvincingly) meek expression. Which will have to do, for now.

Dean shakes his head, resumes his task; his eyes pass over Jesse (looking at Claire) and Claire (looking at Cas) before ending up, inevitably, on Cas himself (looking at Dean). And it’s a bad idea, of course it is - when does Dean ever have good ideas? - but he can’t help himself: keeping eye contact with the fucking angel, Dean licks his fingers clean before clearing his throat and starting the proceedings.

“Okay, so -” he glances at the paper on the table in front of him, tries to sound convincing, “I think Protocol 5 makes sense. Let’s follow it. This means, we need two external teams, one to reach out to the authorities and establish a safe zone -” Jody raises her hand, “- and a second one to check on other hunters.”

“I’ll go,” says Krissy at once.

Dean knows she wants to find her friends, but, well, let her. They may be kids, but they’ve been hunting for years - still counts, in his books. If they’re still alive, they need all the help they can get.

“Not alone, you’re not,” he replies, trying for Fearless Leader and falling short (somewhere between Incompetent Teacher and Annoying Dad, judging by Claire’s epic snort).

He winces, try again.

“Alex, how good are you with a shotgun?”

“Fine,” she says, which is not the answer to the actual question, but, hey, it will do.

“No reckless driving, no fighting, and definitely no wandering off on your own. You two girls stay together, you hear me?”

Krissy rolls her eyes at Donna, and Dean decides it’s best to intervene before things go south.

“Donna, are you taking care of communications then?”

“I am. I’ll need some materials - I’ll get a lift from Jody, have her drop me by Tom Grayson’s house -”

“He’s a local radio nut,” supplies Alex. “Also lives with one of those Japanese wife things.”

“Okay, that’s rude.”

“She’s talking about a doll, old man,” says Claire, and she actually smiles at him.

“A doll?”

“Let’s not go into all that,” says Donna, quite firmly. “What the man does with his own life is his business.”

“Yeah, but a life-size doll? That’s gross.”

“As was my life-size ex-husband. Tom’s not hurting anyone, is he?”

Since both are good points, Dean brings the discussion to an end before people can start arguing over the merits of sex with an inflatable doll versus sex with an actual human. Not that he would have anything to contribute to such debate (“It happened once, Dean! We can’t build our entire fighting strategy against these things based on one experience. We need more research,” as Sam would put it; though not about sex dolls, of course, because Sam is plain boring).

Dean forces his thoughts away from his little brother, and also from dolls, and checks the paper in his hands again.

“Right. You go to this Tom person, then,” he decides, looking at Donna. “Feel free to bring him back here, if necessary. This leaves Claire and Jesse in charge of everything else.”

“Which means?”

“The house, the kids, resources, that kind of things.”

“Thanks a lot. So I get the boring job? What, you think I’m not good enough? I killed a Grigori. Why am I stuck here babysitting?”

“Claire -” starts Cas, from his unimpressive position next to the bouncy castle.

“Shut up! I’m fed up with you trying to keep me safe!”

If Dean turns on her, it has nothing to do, nothing, with her shouting at Cas. He's just trying to remind her he’s in charge, is all. Also, what’s at stake here.

“Safe? The world is ending, Claire. No one is safe. Those wards may well keep out monsters -”

“Thanks,” says Gabriel, from his left.

“- but we don’t know for how long, or if they really work on humans. We also need weapons, food and water, and, starting now, you’re in charge of that.”

Claire still looks like she wants to argue, and Dean huffs in exasperation.

“You’re gonna be working side by side with the fucking Antichrist, Claire. That not adventurous enough for you?”

Okay, so that shuts her up. Great. Dean turns to Jesse, mutters a quick Sorry to him, and he shakes his head. He is the Antichrist, after all.

“What about the three of you? The Light Brigade?” asks Krissy.

“Cas will stay here and help you out. Me and Gabriel are going to sniff out Heaven, see if they can actually help for bloody once.”

“I think it makes more sense if you take Cas,” intervenes Gabriel, all nice and earnest. “I still have my wings. I can check on all of you, keep the lines of communication open. Since, you know, phones don’t work.”

Dean shoots him a very dirty look.

“It’s only logical,” the archangel says, with a shrug. “Isn’t it, brother mine?”

Cas remains silent for a very long moment.

“I’ll go with you,” he says in the end, and Dean has to get busy, right bloody now, to quench the sudden burst of memories these words bring up.

“Great. Let’s get a move on, then.”

.:.

Some hours later, or perhaps mere minutes, Sam is shaken awake from a light slumber by the unpleasant feeling that something is really, really wrong.

And something is.

Lucifer is standing right in front of them, barely thirty feet away. He looks exactly like Sam remembers him - a handsome man in his forties with a shock of dirty blond hair. The expression on his face is the same, as well - a sort of kindness, a look of understanding and naked affection.

What the hell is he doing here? How did he even get ouf of the Cage?

“Madison,” he whispers, though he might as well not - Lucifer is looking right at him, after all, it’s not like they can hide, “Madison, wake up.”

Madison blinks up at him, then looks around, still half-asleep.

“Sam? What happened? Where are we?”

“I’ll explain later. Do you trust me?”

“Does this mean you’re dead? The fact that you’re here?”

“Madison, please.”

So she doesn’t remember; not really. Sam has been thinking about that before falling asleep, on and off, and thinks he may have found a solution; before he can try it out, though, he sees something shift in her expression, and he knows she’s seen Lucifer.

“Who is that?” she asks, with a low growl.

Sam is out of options, so better a stupid theory than no theory at all. Keeping his eyes on Lucifer - Please God, let him stay where he is - he cups Madison’s face, forces her into a kiss. And, almost at once, she gasps into his mouth.

“Sam,” she says, disentangling herself, and then, “Jesus.”

From the way she’s looking at him, it’s worked. She remembers everything. Blessed be the law of silver linings, and all.

“Madison, come on. We need to get out of here, right now.”

Her eyes flicker to Lucifer again, and she nods. Sam gets to his feet and helps her up.

“It is very good to see you, Sam, ahuvi.”

That voice - Sam feels his heart speed up and explode inside his chest, because, God, that voice -

“I was quite concerned on your behalf. I feared the Darkness would have taken you.”

Sam thought he’d never hear this voice again. He’s had nightmares about it - its rough, yet sirupy quality. The things it knew about him. The things it’d promised him. Without meaning or wanting to, Sam moves his head, and looks directly at Lucifer. The angel takes a step closer, stepping into the half-light, and Sam sees the rashes on his skin have disappeared. He looks pristine, now. Healthy and powerful and more threatening than ever.

“I am pleased to see your human part still prevails.”

Human part?

Sam grabs Madison’s hand, tries to think of a plan - and then, if possible, things get worse.

Adam steps out from the trees and comes to stand beside Lucifer. Except, well, this is not Adam, is he, not really. This is Michael. He’s carrying an angel blade, and he looks mad enough to spit nails.

“I see my brother was right,” he says, and his voice is quiet, but it carries easily across the clearing. “You are here, and you are - you still possess some kind of life,” he adds. “It is high time we correct that, Sam Winchester.”

Before Sam can do anything, before he can even move, Michael starts glowing, a bright, blue-white light, an eerie thing which is both blinding and deafening - Sam grabs Madison, trying to shield her - but then -

“NO!” Lucifer roars, and everything is quiet again.

.:.

“Could you please stop thinking so loudly?”

They’ve been driving for almost two hours, and neither of them has said a single word so far. In fact, it’s been so peaceful Dean has almost managed to convince himself that everything is normal, that Cas never said those things to him - that Cas is keeping quiet because he’s tired, or because he’s doing angel things inside his own mind. Dean has been focusing on the road, and good thing too, because between the weird twilight and the cars abandoned on the tarmac (eight of them so far, all accidents, and five half corpses stumbling about in the shadows around the wreckage) he’d better check where he’s going.

He couldn’t stop himself from thinking, though; from obsessing over bottled water and salt bullets and ways to get human blood to make the wards stronger - anything, really to keep his mind off his unsettling, barely there passenger.

And it kind of works - until Cas calls his bluff, that is.

“Are you freaking reading my mind, on top of everything else?”

“No. You told me you didn’t want me to. It’s just loud, that’s all.”

Dean snorts.

“Right. Sorry about that. It's not like I'm upset, or anything.”

“Good.”

And Cas is fucking serious. Dean sees him out of the corner of his eyes, see how Cas starts to retreat within the confines of his own mind, getting away from Dean to - pray, or turn himself off, or whatever the fuck he does, and no way he has the guts to do that now, no fucking way -

“Is it true you wanted to kill me?” asks Dean, and he hadn’t meant to ask this at all, or, if he ever did, he'd planned to do it in style, a kind of Clint Eastwood growl, nonchalant, dignified.

Instead, well, instead Cas doesn’t reply, and it all comes out like vomit - Dean keeps talking, raising his voice, banging his hand flat on the wheel at the end of each sentence.

“I can’t believe you almost killed me, Cas. I can’t believe you wanted to. What the hell, man? We are friends. We are family. So you dumped me, good for you. You don’t fucking kill someone when you dump them - what are you, a psycho?”

“And what do you suggest is the traditional procedure?” asks Cas, looking straight ahead.

And Dean, Dean has had enough of it. All of it. Because Cas - how can Cas just -

Because, well, so Dean had decided to trust Gabriel. Sue him. But one thing is trusting him, and another is trusting him. Dean had assumed Gabriel had been lying, or wrong. That’s all that has gotten him through the morning - this certitude that, despite everything, Cas would not hurt him. He’d been sure, goddammit. Because, fucking hell, Cas always had the opportunity, and sometimes the will, even the direct order to kill him, but he’s never hurt him. Not seriously, anyway, and over the years, Dean has sort of rebuilt his sense of safety and worthiness around this central, essential truth - that Cas would never hurt him. And Dean even remembers Cas saying it - a very vague memory, tinted with red and black, but a memory nonetheless: I will not hurt Dean.

And now -

But what can he do, really? Having any sort of girly talk about feelings with someone who’s said what Cas said last night is out of the cards. His heart has been ripped out of his chest once already. Dean is not about to put it back in only for it to be crushed again.

“In my experience,” he says instead, as pleasantly as he can manage it, “if two people want to stay friends, or need to work together, compliments are the best way to go. Say, dunno, one nice thing. Every hour. On the dot.”

“This seems most unusual.”

“Didn’t write the rules, man. It’s just what we do.”

Up ahead, there is a shadow on the road, which turns out to be a banged-up motorcycle. Dean swerves around it.

“I cannot recall a single piece of narrative exemplifying -” Cas starts after a full minute of silence, but Dean interrupts him.

“Did you just scan all we ever wrote? Like, as a species?”

“No. Only the relevant parts of it.”

Now, Sam, of bloody course, would ask which parts are those, and how Cas selected them. Dean doesn’t give a fuck.

“Movies are not about breaking up, Cas. They’re about those first two weeks when you fuck the shit out of each other. They don’t count.”

“We never -” tries Cas, and then, thankfully, abandons that particular train of thought, because maybe there is a God after all and He’s watching over their stupid, soccer mom car right now. “DeVito's War of the Roses is -”

“- very good with creative ideas about dogs,” says Dean. “Look, you asked me, I told you what I think. That’s it. Now, there’s something more important on the table here - the Demon Tablet.”

“What about it?”

“Should we ask Gabriel to find Metatron? I mean, he probably could, but, well, do we trust him with that thing?”

“Gabriel is -”

And, again, Cas stops. Must be the International Day of Broken Sentences, or something.

“Gabriel is?” asks Dean, when it becomes clear that Cas is never going to finish his sentence.

“I do not feel comfortable about discussing this issue with you. It’s very personal.”

Son of a bitch. It’s very personal? What next? And who even says that? What did Cas even do during his time as a human, take out a subscription to Cosmo?

“Right,” he says, stepping on the gas a little without even noticing it.

“Discussing personal issues generates intimacy.”

“Okay. And since you dumped me -”

“I cannot run the risk that we should become intimate again.”

Dean counts to ten in his mind; then he counts to twenty; then he breathes in and out, long, deep breaths, telling himself, over and over again, that crashing the car wouldn’t do any good, none, because Cas can’t die, of course he can’t, he’s a bloody angel of the bloody Lord, and, more to the point, he, Dean, is already dead, his stomach and lungs and other squishy bits rotting inside him at this very moment. So, well.

“Do we ask Gabriel to find Metatron or not?” he says, through gritted teeth.

“It is probably not a very wise course of action, but perhaps better than the alternative,” replies Cas, after another long moment of silence, and there is clearly something more to this sentence, something Cas is leaving out on purpose.

And Dean, Dean makes a mistake - he glances at Cas, out of habit, because that’s what they always did, or used to do, anyway - communicate without words, reassure each other, read, in a sense, each other’s minds. Of course, Dean could never read Cas’ mind, he could barely scratch the surface of what Cas even is, let alone what he thinks about, but over the years he’d gotten to know the angel pretty well, and he could mostly understand what Cas was thinking, his moods and feelings; and the same, after all, went for Cas, because Dean had been adamant - Cas needed to keep out of Dean’s mind (“Some things are private, man.” - “What things?” - “Just things.” - “Are you referring to your sporadic musings involving big breasts? Because it’s more than -” - “Shut up.”) - and therefore Cas had ended up looking at Dean the same way Dean looked at him - unconsciously checking body language, what his eyes were saying, whether he looked tired or happy or downright furious. And he’d gotten pretty good to read these clues, considering.

But now, now Dean glances at Cas and his rage evaporates, desperation taking over, because Cas is not looking at him, Cas is just - just gone. He’s said what he wanted to say, and he doesn’t care if Dean got it or not. He’s not glancing back at Dean, he’s not offering his earnest face and annoyingly blue eyes up for interpretation. He’s not even there, in a sense. His back is too straight, his hands are still on his knees, as they were fifty miles back, all neat and motionless and completely, utterly other.

And then, just when Dean is about to lose it completely, Cas checks the dashboard and turns towards him.

“You have an extremely symmetric face,” he says, quite seriously, as though explaining the reasons and implications of the goddamn Middle-East conflict. “As I understand it, in the present day and age such symmetry is considered quite attractive.”

There is something trapped in Dean’s throat, half-laugh, half-sob. He swallows it down before he can discover what it is.

“Thank you, Cas,” he says instead, and the he pushes a random CD into the slot and turns the music on.

And, of course, it’s Céline Dion, because this is his life and he never catches a break. Not a single one. Not ever.