Cal was pretty firm about her lifestyle. She was a love 'em and leave 'em kind of girl. Not necessarily because she never saw herself sticking around with a guy, but more because her lifestyle didn't really lend itself to long term committed relationships. Actually, her lifestyle often found her nearest and dearest six feet under.
This was why Dean had always been such a surprise to her. True to form, he'd snuck past all her defenses and when she finally figured it out he'd refused to take no for an answer. And when he'd just up and left her out in the middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania after a hunt without so much as a 'how do you do'… well she'd been less than impressed. No car. No Dean. No Sam. And she had to find out from some random hunter passing through some random bar that there was an apocalypse looming on the horizon. Sam and Dean were, of course, smack in the middle of it.
She'd been in the process of trying to find them, ready to tear a strip out of them for leaving her out of the action when Harvelle's burnt to the ground and hunters became an endangered species. When Ellen and Jo turned up in pieces, signs of Hellhounds strewn about all over the little hardware store they'd blown to bits, Cal gave up the search. Sam and Dean were trying really hard to keep her the hell away. She had to believe that if they needed her particular skill set, they'd call. In the meantime, if they were hell bent on protecting her? She wasn't going to argue. Hunters had become the hunted and they were being picked off at an alarming rate.
Still, she did pretty well for herself, even managed to get word of the two Kings of the Apocalypse from time to time. There were rumors of an angel riding shotgun in the Impala. Well, no. That wasn't entirely accurate. He was squatting in the backseat. Her spot in the backseat of Black Betty, Dean's Metallicar. Cal didn't know whether to be worried, angry or just plain hurt. So instead she just let it go. Whatever happened, she was out of it now. That much had been made incredibly clear, or so she'd thought.
Until the call came through.
And that was how she found herself crossing the damned border from her little farmhouse in rural Canada over to the US, muttering darkly to herself the whole way. "Friggin' man and his friggin' 'end of the world' emergencies! Doesn't he realize it's been years? Didn't he figure I'd have a life by now? Or at the very least that I'd have more self respect than to be running back with the snap of his ever lovin' fingers?"
Except that she was running back and that pissed her off even more because the truth was she was worried and had been for quite some time. There had been a lot of wild rumors surrounding the Winchester boys and she dissected every last one on the long trip through the great U.S. of A to where she'd been summoned. By the time she managed to find the bunker that had been hidden to within an inch of its life, she'd worked herself up into one hell of a state.
Busting down the front door with one booted foot with total disregard to the unbolted lock or the splintering hardwood that went flying, she made the entrance of a lifetime in a way that would have made Lara Croft weep with envy. Too bad there was no one around to see it.
"Winchester?" Her now shrill voice echoed through the empty hollows of the place. "You had better be here! If I find out I dropped everything and drove two days out to bail your ass out of trouble and it's just a false alarm you're gonna have a little bit more to worry about than some lame ass demon issues."
She could hear him. A less than gracious 'I told you calling her was a bad idea!' from somewhere not too far away. Dean was probably giving his brother crap for making him call her in the first place. Classy guy that one. "Nice to see you haven't forgotten how to make a girl feel welcome there, caveman." Words spat into the emptiness bounced back at toward her as she searched the surrounding rooms she followed the sound of his voice.
When she finally did find him she didn't know what to make of the mismatched group of men. "Christ!" Crowley, the rumored 'king of hell' was weeping quietly into an embroidered hanky at one end of a very long, very retro conference table. To his right sat a stoic Sam, who although older and more built than when they'd last seen each other, looked sickly and malnourished. As if he'd been fighting something terminal, like cancer, for quite some time.
Dean was beside himself, though he was trying damned hard to hide it. He hadn't shaved or changed his clothes. The aura of sulfur and something sweeter yet indefinable, completely at odds with each other, rolled off him and permeated the air like some sort of shield. You couldn't get within five feet of him without getting enough of a whiff to make a girl want to run the other way. Or… you know… drag him over to the nearest shower. Soap him up and get him clean before having her way with him. Not that the bum deserved as much… but… there was nothing wrong with a little healthy fantasy now was there?
"You look like hell, Dean. And you smell something fierce." That was her hello. No smile. No 'nice to see you're still alive after all these years. Glad you're not dead.' He scowled as if he'd expected nothing less. He had those sad eyes though, the ones more commonly attributed to Sam. Maybe he'd hoped for more. "Hey, is it my imagination or is Sam glowing?"
A pregnant silence filled the room as if everyone had something to say about it but no one wanted to admit anything was wrong. Well, hell! "Alright, spill it. I want it all. Everything, and I mean everything! You asked for my help, you've got to tell me what the hell's going on."
"That's my fault, I'm afraid." Crowley managed to get out between hiccups and sobs. "An unfortunate side effect of not finishing the ritual that was necessary to rid me of my demonic nature." And he was apologizing. Right. Well, that was 'spot the difference' number one. Number two was how Sam was not only glowing, but also vibrating with the energy that his body could hardly hold. Closing her eyes and suppressing the bone deep weariness that already threatened to take hold, Cal asked the million dollar question. "What in God's name have you two gotten yourselves into this time?"
"My father had nothing to do with this." A very deep, hoarse voice answered from the other end of the room. When Cal turned to see who it belonged to she was met with more mussed hair and day-old stubble growth. What set him apart were the suit and trench coat that had seen better days. Oh, and those eyes. That one, it seemed, could see right into a person's soul. So this was the angel. She hadn't expected to find him attractive, but there it was. This one, she decided right then and there, this one can stay a while.
"Well hello there, sailor. New in town?" She shot him a sly smile, amused by his confusion and shamelessly assessing his better…um…assets.
"But I'm not a sailor." That delightfully gravelly voice protested, having completely missed the obvious innuendo. Oh the things she could do under the influence of that voice! Unfortunately Dean had other plans. "Yeah, she knows Cas. Just sit tight and let me handle this." Oh, and here we go again! Mr. Take Charge is calling the shots. He didn't even give her the chance to hit him with a comback. He just grabbed her by the elbow and ushered her out of the room and around the corner.
"What the…!" He put a hand over her mouth and shushed her like she was some kind of petulant child. "Just. Wait. I know you're pissed off and you've got a right to be. I just need… " Eyes on the ceiling as if praying for strength, or maybe questioning his own sanity in the face of what he was about to do, he let the sentence drift off into nothing.
"Look, Sam and I have been through a lot. The Apocalypse. Lucifer, Micheal and every angel and demon in between. I've sold my soul, been to hell and spent a lifetime there before that guy in the trench coat dragged me out of the fire and back home to Sam. We've fought leviathan. Took 'em right back to purgatory where they belong." He let the words float away, as if he forgot where he'd been going with it all. He had the look of a man who'd met fate head on and faced death with a grim smile. The shiver it sent through her had nothing to do with attraction. What's happened to you Dean? Then he looked right into her big blue eyes and broke the news that would change everything.
"We found a way to shut the gates of heaven and hell. We were going to do it, Cal. We were so close to just ending it all and locking those sons of bitches up where they belong." She could be pretty near sighted when angry, and Cal was plenty pissed off, but there was no way to miss how close to the edge Dean was teetering.
"But?" Three letters hung in the air, threatening to choke the life out of the man who was almost literally clinging to his last shred of hope. "But to do that, to give Crowley his humanity back, Sam has to die." And there it was, the whole thing in a nutshell: Winchester kryptonite.
"How close did you get?" Judging from the emotional mess that she'd noticed in Crowley a moment ago, they couldn't have been that far off from sealing the deal. "Let's just say we were in the home stretch." He was pacing the way she used to, peering through the open door every time he got close. She wasn't sure if he did it to reassure the three men inside that he wasn't far, or to appease his own fears that they might have checked out in the moments when they were out of sight.
"Okay, so that's why Sam's become the human equivalent of a glow worm. How long's he been like that?" The job took over, forcing Cal to push aside old hurts and anger in order to do what needed doing. "Two, three days tops. I'm worried about him, sure, but Cas says it should fade with time. We've got bigger problems." Bigger problems than a glow in the dark Sasquatch? Oh, this ought to be good.
"You catch the news at all on your way down here?" She nodded. "Something about some massive meteor showers a few nights back." She answered and it just clicked like snapping fingers in her head. What she would have already suspected if her head hadn't been so far up her ass out of anger and worry. It wasn't a meteor shower everyone had seen a couple of nights earlier. "Saint Sacrefice! Something's wrong with the angel, right? What the hell is going on? What happened to the angel for there to be a massive meteor shower-like event like that? The radio said people could see it all over the world at the same time!" Night or day, the whole world say stars falling from the sky.
He couldn't look at her. It was big enough that he wasn't just avoiding eye contact but all of her entirely. He couldn't even look in the direction of the three musketeers in the other room. Letting out a slow, labored exhale, as if working through some intense inner pain and he spoke just the one word. "Angels" Emphasis on the 's'.
"There's more than one?" The thought set her on edge, eyes darting around the room as if a hundred of them might start just appearing out of nowhere. "Just how many of them are we talking about here?" "Can't be sure but from what Cas was saying we're probably looking at all of them."
"All of- Holy Hell! You boys sure don't do things halfway, do you?" And she wasn't sure why it was he kept looking up at the ceiling since from what he'd just said there wasn't anyone up there to take his calls anymore. The news had set her to pacing. Dean had relinquished the floor to her, holding up the wall instead as he watched her go. Waiting her out, it seemed, although for what she wasn't all that sure.
"Okay. So Sam's sucked the evil out of Crowley. Crowley's nearly human and one step away from being the reason all of Hell gets shuttered up permanently. The angel and his buddies have been locked out of the house and now… what? Is this where you tell me I'm going to be the human sacrifice to end it all? 'Cause you of all people should know I am not the virgin you're looking for." The sound that pulled out of him wasn't the chuckle she remembered. In fact, it was probably best if she didn't put a name to it. It wouldn't do to start seeing the man as breakable at this stage of the game.
"No. No, we're not looking for a sacrifice. Actually, we're not all that sure what the hell we're doing. There isn't a whole lot available out there on Metatron and we can't fix a damned thing until kick down Heaven's door and kill the bitch." Okay. Well on the one hand: great news! No need to fight her way out of a triple-decker manwich out of sheer self preservation. On the other? They were up a creek without a paddle and it was starting to smell real bad. Yep. Things were about par for course there.
"Enough Dean. You called. You never call but you did this time even though you've got plenty of able bodies. You called and I came. Why?" As far as she could tell he had three willing sets of hands. She was pretty sure those numbers would multiply with time, what with all the angels suddenly homeless and in need of a place to crash. So what in the hell did he expect her to do that they couldn't?
One last look through the open door before he gently closed it, careful to listen for the snick of the mechanism to slide in to place, and he was on her invading her personal space so she was actually backing up to get away from him
"Why? I've got a demon who's not really a demon anymore. I've got an angel who's had his grace ripped out. And I've got a brother who's radioactive with whatever the hell he pulled out of Crowley, who needs me to show him everything's going to be okay even though all signs are pointing to 'it's the end of everything as we know it' again!" With every word he stepped a little closer, forcing her to take yet another step back without so much as looking out for where she was going. She didn't dare take her eyes off his, didn't recognize this animal in front of her.
Her whole body jerked infinitesimally toward him when she hit the wall. Not because she wanted him but with the shock of it. "I called you because everyone else is gone. I need someone I can trust who can hold their own. As much as I want you gone, far away from all our 'end of the world' crap that gets everyone killed, I can't protect you anymore." He was so close a sheet of paper would have had a hard time fitting itself between them. Emotion rolling off him in waves she could feel just as clearly as the heat of his skin through their clothes. Tread carefully girl. Move the wrong way and this one'll blow sky high. But she was far past listening to that inner voice of hers.
With the kind of care a person takes when handling a disoriented wild animal she slowly raised her hand. If he'd been expecting the fight she usually reserved for those who'd wronged her in some way, there was no sign of it. He stood frozen, a living breathing sculpture of a hero about to lose his shit.
Just in case, she let her palm hover just shy of his five o'clock shadow to make clear her intention in case he objected. Eyes slamming shut, it was all he could do to just keep breathing. It's okay you big fool. I get it. I'm here to glue your broken bits back on and get you through this. Not her usual gig, but she'd take it even if the stakes weren't what they were.
She didn't get the chance to make the first move. Hazel eyes slid lazily open and he went all blurry around the edges as his cheek shifted ever so slightly to meet the soft skin just out of reach. "Okay." Just like that she knew she was done for. Whatever he needed, she'd do it. Dean was not the type of man to ask anything of anyone if he could help it, even less of her. A phone call was a small gesture that most would consider too little, too late but for this man is was a grand gesture.
Later she would swear that she heard the loud crash of waves breaking on the shoreline as he leaned in toward her. As if that one little four letter word of consent had been enough to unleash everything he'd kept pent up behind those walls of his, the better to keep everyone else afloat through the storm. The kiss they shared, far from gentle, was a battle of clashing teeth and dueling tongues. He held on as if trying to literally pull some of the strength she offered up inside of himself. Pushing and pulling each other, feet rooted to the spot where he held her tightly against the ancient bunker wall. When he finally did pull away, it was to rest his burning forehead against the cool white cotton on her shoulder. "You're sure?" He needed to hear her say it, knowing full well just how much he was asking of her.
Growling, she gripped him by the soft worn plaid of his lapels and roughly manhandled him to look at her again. "After all this time, you really peg me for that kind of girl?" A little sass was all it took. Maybe it was the comfort of the familiar way she was roughing him up. Maybe it was the release of some of the tension that had gripped him for longer than he could remember because for just that second he had no control over what she did to him. Maybe he was just happy to see her. It really didn't matter.
What did matter was that he was laughing. There was a grin spreading across his face so wide it overwhelmed the worry lines on his forehead and wiped away the perma-scowl he'd been wearing since before she'd busted in the door to the bunker.
Well, it wasn't the solution to the end of Heaven and Earth as everyone knew it, but it was a start. A girl's got to take care of her own, after all. Doesn't she?