N.B.: Seriously, if you don;t read Supernatural: The End before this, this will never make any sense.

1-If Death Ever Slept

"This is proof you're rigging the game," Bobby said, laying his cards on the table. "Aces and eights. Dead man's hand."

Dean shook his head, throwing his garbage cards on the table. Well, a pair of Kings was usually decent, but not against two pairs. "I swear that's just a coincidence. I don't know how to manipulate cards."

"Says the pool shark." Bobby swept the pot of gold galleons towards him. Hey, they were in Heaven, and money meant nothing here, so they could play for whatever they wanted. One night, they decided to bet with diamonds, just for shits and giggles.

Dean took a gulp from his beer bottle, and looked around Bobby's house. It was still kind of unkempt, still dusty, with books piled everywhere, and the occasional liquor bottle where you least expected it. Since this was Bobby's idea of heaven, it could have been neater, but that wasn't the way he wanted it. And Dean totally got that, because just stepping inside this reality, he felt like he was home. Home was not perfect, but it was yours.

He and Bobby regularly met for poker games, or to just sit and drink. Bobby had always been like a father to him, more than his actual father, who was a bit more like a squad leader. Dean liked these moments with Bobby, because it made him feel human again, in a good way.

Bobby gathered the cards back into a deck and started shuffling them, staring at Dean warily. "I've been looking through my books here, tryin' to find out if there's any way to reverse the whole Ascension process. If there is, the angels have conveniently erased it. Maybe you should ask Sam if he can find anything."

Dean gave Bobby a faint smile. "I've told you, I don't want to reverse it, even if it's possible. I'm okay."

"You're okay?" Bobby sat forward, giving him a look that Dean had seen a million times before. It was the one that said if Bobby was a more violent guy, he'd totally have hit Dean with his hat. "You're the fucking angel of death, Dean. You're not Human anymore. That's insane."

He considered that, holding his beer bottle, which was always perfectly cold. Another Heaven perk. "I think Cass must still have the training wheels on me, 'cause it hasn't been bad at all. I have to admit, the whole teleportation thing is a whole buttload of fun." That was true. Dean sort of expected that he would loathe this job, taking over as the Horseman of Death, but it wasn't as horrible as he thought it would be. And of course, he could totally kick the ass of everything, because who killed Death? Except him. He was just hoping another moron wouldn't make a try for it.

Bobby sighed heavily, shaking his head. "You fucked up killing Death, I get that, but that's no reason to put this all on you. You had the weight of the world on your shoulders when you were Human. You shouldn't have the weight of the universe on your shoulders in death. It's not fair, kid."

Now Dean sighed, because it wasn't the first time they'd had this conversation. And he appreciated that Bobby was worried for him, but who robbed the universe of Death? He did, and he had to make up for that massive fuck up. Plus, Sam's worry that he wouldn't be himself hadn't come to pass. Cass kept his promise, and Dean was still Dean … just a new, improved, extra lethal variety. "Bobby –"

"Don't give me that same old shit. Are you really telling me you don't miss Earth?"

"I don't, actually, 'cause I'm there so much."

He scowled at him. "You know what I mean, idjit."

"Yeah, but –" Dean stopped, as he suddenly heard Hannah's voice inside his head.

"Dean, please come to my office immediately."

Dean must have canted his head without realizing it, because Bobby squinted at him. "Angel radio?"

He nodded, getting up from the table. "Hannah needs me for some reason."

"See? Now you have a boss. Doesn't that suck?"

Dean shrugged. "I can ignore her. She's only my boss as long as I play along. I'm Death. What's she going to do to me if I play hooky?" And to be fair, he was kind of driving her crazy. All his unscheduled visits to Earth, mainly to kill monsters, was apparently bad form. But it hadn't stopped him yet.

Bobby shook his head, frowning, still disapproving of all of this. But he also said, "Take care of yourself, Dean."

"Always do," he assured him, putting the beer bottle down. He then turned, and took a single step, moving from Bobby's heaven to Hannah's office in that one movement. See? That teleportation thing was fucking awesome.

Hannah's office was essentially made of ice. It was all blue-white, and genuinely frozen water. Dean put his hand on her desk, and felt it. But it held together and never melted, because this was Heaven, and it played by its own set of physical laws.

He did like her. She was an angel, sure, but she was trying to incorporate some emotion in this otherwise Vulcan place, and he knew she was taking shit for it from angels who preferred the standing status quo. Those were the same angels who hated him for daring to be a former Human and in their rarefied air, and hated Cass, for seeing him through the whole Ascension thing. So it was just like Earth, in that he was hated by a lot of people who were supposedly on the same side. Nice to know some things never changed.

She looked up from her desk, and gave him a faint smile. Because he had all these new senses as Death, he knew that she was a little off put by him at times. And he didn't blame her either, 'cause what the fuck? Making him an Angel of Death seemed like a horrible idea, both on paper and in actuality. But if Cass was to be believed, that hadn't been her call. That one was made way above her pay grade. "Dean, I was wondering if you'd like to accompany Castiel on an inter-dimensional trip tomorrow."

"Where? And why?"

"I don't know how much information you have on when the Earth was initially tamed, but many particularly dangerous gods were exiled to their own dimensions, so they wouldn't hurt or prey upon Humans. We have it on very good authority some of them are going to try and breach it. They've done it before, and we always fought them back, but Castiel was of the opinion that the two of you could go over there and take care of it before they even transgressed the dimensional barrier."

When he "Ascended" to his Angel of Death position, a lot of information was dumped in his head. Too much for him to actually make sense of without going crazy. But Cass saved his bacon there too, as he put up these partitions. Not walls, as these were far more porous. It just kept information at a remove until he needed it. Dean suddenly just had this data now, and could scan through it like it was a boring book. This was a semi-regular thing; those gods gave it a shot every couple of hundred years or so, and failed every time, although not without a little destruction and loss of life. "What, like a behind enemy lines sabotage mission?"

She considered that a moment. "In a way. He thought just the two of you could do it."

Dean nodded. "Probably can. Sure, count me in."

"Thank you. I know you two have been fighting together for some time. It should make it easier."

It was then that an alert popped up in Dean's mind. Just like it was hard to process all that information at once, it was difficult to process so much death at once. He'd been learning to filter it, with Cass's help, and he'd mentally shuffled things so any deaths happening ahead of their supposedly "allotted" time jumped to the forefront of his consciousness. It was usually due to monsters or demons, or an occasional god. In other words, asshats. And someone just showed up twenty two years early: Reverend John Jeffers Ivanov. Okay, time to investigate.

The best thing about dealing with angels? You didn't have to make an excuse or say goodbye; you just left the fucking room. It wasn't considered rude. Small talk and basic courtesy was apparently a Human construct, and it hadn't exactly made its way to Heaven yet. Which was great with Dean, because he got to just get the fuck out when he was done dealing with them.

So he stepped from Hannah's office to where Ivanov had just died on Earth, which was on a road just outside of Meridian, Texas. Apparently he was tailgating a container truck that rather inexplicably lost part of its load, and Ivanov and the front of his car were crushed by a pallet load of … dildos? Yep, that's what it indeed looked like.

The cops were still there, interviewing the truck driver, who was at all a loss to explain how the back door of his truck opened by itself, and how this particular crate of goods worked its way to the back, and flew out, crushing the car. Weirdly enough, the cops were sympathetic, perhaps because the whole thing didn't make sense. It seemed like a bad joke.

Which is how Dean knew who was responsible, even before he caught the trace of archangel energy. Damn it, he just wouldn't die, would he?

"Holy shit snacks, it's true," Gabriel said, appearing in the center of the road. Nobody saw them, because in this mode, only angels could see one another. "Somebody went crazy and made you the Angel of Death. Congratulations, I think? Or I'm sorry. Take your pick."

Dean sighed. "You just never die, do you?"

"Nope. You'd know a thing or two about that, wouldn't you?"

Dean couldn't kill angels. Angels weren't in his purview. Which was a shame, especially now. He pointed at the car buried beneath the crate of dildos. "What the hell was this about?"

Gabriel scowled in disgust, and it seemed genuine. "Do you know what this sick fuck was doing to kids? I mean, I intended to torment him ironically, 'cause he's one of those firebrand extremist preachers who talks out his own ass and pretends to know what the will of God is. I really can't stand those idiots. But then I found out what he was actually doing. I know they're all hypocrites, but every now and again, you come across one that is genuinely evil. Such as this dildo killed by dildos."

"You could be making that up."

Gabriel raised an eyebrow at that. "You should be able to tell if I'm lying or not."

He was right. And as far as Dean could tell, he was being honest. That was just nauseating. Well, Gabriel was a hundred percent right to kill this asshole. If he hadn't, Dean would have come down and personally taken care of this perv himself. "Okay, yeah." There was blood and radiator fluid leaking from the car, and it had formed into a huge, swirling red puddle. It looked like the car itself was losing blood. "Shoulda just told me, I'd have ganked him myself."

Gabriel smiled, like he'd just passed a test. "Already you're more reasonable than the last guy. Still, shame you went and killed him."

Dean could only shrug. It didn't matter now.

"So it's true that Cass has joined me in the VIP section?"

Gabriel was one of the few Archangels left. And now Cass was one too. Dean nodded. "Half of the angels hate him for pushing me through Ascension, but apparently someone higher up approved of it enough to give him a new set of wings."

Gabriel shook his head. "It wasn't that. You know what it was, right?" He peered at him closely. "Oh shit, you don't."

"What are you going on about now?"

Gabriel shook his head slowly, like he didn't understand how Dean could be so dumb. He'd been on the receiving end of that before. "Our Dad – when he was around, and when I knew him – was kind of a sucker for a good love story. You do know that the second Cass stepped into the Ascension chamber, he was dead, right? The only way out is through Ascension or death, and he wasn't trying to Ascend. He went in there only to selflessly protect you. The second he stepped through that door, he was gone."

Dean could easily recall how sad Hannah had been when Cass said he was going in with him. At the time, Dean thought it seemed like everybody was worried this was a death sentence for Cass. Cass insisted it wasn't. And he was lying to him, so he didn't feel guilty. Son of a bitch. Cass always knew his volunteering to see him through Ascension meant his death, regardless of whether Dean survived or not. "Goddamn it. If I had known that I wouldn't have gone ahead with it."

"Maybe. But the reason Cass is back in new super Cass form is probably because dear old Dad was touched. An angel so in love with a Human he's willing to trade his life for his is one of those super rare things, like a unicorn with table manners. And Dad could hardly bump Cass up into the Archangel of Love without the Human he was willing to die for still on the board. So your Ascension was probably the flukiest of fluky things, Dean. It probably wasn't even personal. You aren't Death because you're so bad ass, but because someone actually loved your stupid ass." Gabriel took a single step, and suddenly he was right in front of him. "Honestly, I don't know how you got so lucky as to gain so much of Cass's affection. I mean, sure, you're pretty, for a meathead, but the personality –" he just sighed and shook his head. "I mean, you're well suited to Angel of Death, if that's any consolation."

Dean was kind of surprised by this, and kind of not. It wasn't that he didn't know Cass's friendship with him was weird in several respects, especially since angels were generally as friendly as cacti full of brown recluse spiders. But love was kind of an overstatement, wasn't it? Or maybe not. He really wasn't sure. Cass turned out to be the best friend he ever had, which was something he could never have guessed or predicted when he first met him. They always had a weird bond; even when Cass went power hungry and crazy, Dean always thought he could reach him somehow. He didn't know what to say, or what Gabriel expected him to say.

As it turned out, Gabriel didn't expect him to say anything. "Castiel is my weird little brother. I don't understand him at all. I mean, clearly. He's way out of your league. But understand, if you ever hurt him or fail him in any way, I will fucking destroy you. So you be worthy of him, Dead Boy, or you're answering to me. We clear?"

A weird threat. Even an Archangel couldn't kill Death, right? But it wasn't just that. Dean realized he found it bizarre to think he'd ever hurt Cass. (Again.) "Clear." He paused, as something new occurred to him, and it was startling to think. "Hey, does this mean we're brothers now, you and I? I am technically an angel."

Gabriel's face scrunched in disgust. "No! You're just … like a weird in-law. And let's get one thing straight: you are never borrowing my beach house." With that puzzling statement, Gabriel pointed at his own eyes, and then pointed at Dean, a tacit "I'm watching you". Then he took a step back, and teleported elsewhere.

"Thanks for making it weird, dickhead!" he shouted after him.

Dean had really been hoping he was dead. Apparently some Archangels were harder to kill than others. And it just figured one of the most annoying ones would still be alive.