Title: The Long Way Home
Characters: Sam, Dean, various
Word Count: 4900
Rating: T for language

Warnings/Spoilers: Curtain!fic, of sorts. Some minor non-plot spoilers for S11/12, meaning (vague description below, beware if you're a super-spoiler-freak)

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the final destination for the Winchesters after their last death, the name of the reaper they've been encountering, and a very recent S12 partnership as well as an extremely vague character reference, but no specific spoilers regarding any major plot points for recent seasons. Various other spoilers, primarily a reference to Season Nine's episode Slumber Party.

Summary: Sam and Dean Winchester do not go quietly into that dark night. In fact, when three very different beings show up to battle it out over who will finally be gifted eternal possession of the brothers' combined soul, well… let's just say, Death would be making popcorn, if he were still around. Written for the 2016 spn_j2_xmas gift exchange on LiveJournal, for madebyme_x. Prompts included a road trip, peaceful happy endings, the Impala, and secrets of the Bunker.

A/N: Upon rewatching parts of Season Ten thanks to a TNT rerun, I realized that Billie actually has encountered Castiel before, however briefly, due to Amara's appropriating him as a messenger, and she did make an alliance with Crowley at some point after Death's, well, death - so just disregard that oversight upon reading this, por favor? It's not like I'm the only writer in SPN history to leave gaping inconsistencies and plot holes. Cheers and Happy New Year. *grin*

"Road trip," Dean suggests without hesitation, as if it's the most natural thing in the world, and given the ideas Sam's come up with and promptly discarded over the last week, it actually isn't the worst notion. It certainly beats being trapped in a time loop of recurring memories (been there, done both, thanks) or being de-aged and having to re-live his Terrible Teens.

"Road trip to where, though? We can't just wander aimlessly around the States. It has to have structure of some kind, or the whole thing disintegrates after five decades."

Dean shoves the entire rest of his pizza-piece in his mouth and squints at the wall of the library in silence for a moment, chewing with an open-mouthed pensiveness which is equal parts fascinating and nauseating.

"I mean, I really don't want to revisit every case we've ever had, do you?"

"Uh, that's a negatory."

"And I'm betting you have no interest in touring the country's historic landmarks."

The eyeroll he receives is answer enough.

"I'm open to suggestions, Dean."

His brother whips out his phone and begins to search for Chuck-only-knows-what, shooting him a grin over the screen that is pure evil.

Yeah, probably going to regret even asking, but they are on a very short time frame here if the underground supernatural rumor mill is accurate. He can't afford to be picky.

"Well, well. I believe there's a bad joke in here somewhere, eh? An angel, a demon, and a reaper walk into a Bunker…" An impatient hand-wave silences the demon's words before they can continue, and he glares at the impassive figure across the room. At least gestures are a universal language, and he has no problem returning one, somewhat less politely.

"Such civility," she replies dryly, releasing his tongue after a moment. "Had I known I would be forced to rid this place of an infestation before reaping these two ridiculously troublesome humans, I would have come an hour earlier. What, exactly, are you doing here, demon?"

"I have a name, darling."

"And I don't care." Dark eyes flicker to the silent figure across the room. "Who's your friend."

"We are not friends."

"He always says that. We're besties, actually." A disarming grin, which fails to evoke any response whatsoever. "Fine, that's the Winchester guardian angel. Surely you've heard of Castiel?"

"I have, and frankly would rather eliminate him from the equation just on principle," Billie replies, arms folded. "He has upset the natural order almost as much as these two. But even I don't countermand orders that high."

"Enough," Castiel says suddenly, eyes flashing between them. "Crowley, I do not know how you even got into the Bunker, but you will leave immediately."

"Make me, Feathers."

The angel takes a threatening step forward, only to be pinned in place by an impatient hand. "I do not have time for this," the reaper sighs, restraining the erstwhile King of Hell in a similar fashion without even looking. "Take your drama outside; I have a job to do."

"I will not allow it," Castiel threatens, though the words are almost hilariously pointless, as he is powerless against any reaper, much less one of this magnitude.

"Oh, you will, Castiel."

"You will not take them!"

"If anything, their souls belong to me ten times over, payment for the havoc they've wreaked in my kingdom over the decades!" Dark eyes flash dangerously in the demon's direction, and he instinctively backs up a pace. "Of course, negotiation over the matter is always an option…"

Castiel has been looking about and now glances back, a slightly puzzled gleam in his eyes.

"Should we not have sensed the presence of two drifting human souls by now?" he inquires, genuinely curious.

Billie sighs, and releases him cautiously. "I have no doubt they are delaying the inevitable as long as possible. This job does not pay enough, that much I can tell you."

"When it comes to those two bloody imbeciles, that I could have told you," Crowley mutters, dusting himself off as he too is released.

"A simple spell will be sufficient to remand their souls back into the material plane in this vicinity, if they are concealed by any means known to these so-called Men of Letters." She waves one hand in the air, and speaks a short phrase which Castiel takes great interest in – the words sound vaguely like Enochian, but are definitely not; perhaps the language of the reapers has a basis in the Old Tongue of the angels – and then, the room begins to shake around them. The concrete walls quiver, one cracks down the side with a sound like a gunshot. The ancient computers suddenly whir to life and just as suddenly die, in one huge burst of energy –

And all around them, a blinding flash of electric blue illuminates the walls, ceiling, floor – and the intricate, unusually sigilled devil's trap which takes up the entirety of the room, duplicated over and over on all six surfaces.

"Uh." Castiel's eyes look about to pop out of his head. "Is that supposed to happen?"

Billie reaches out cautiously toward the wall and then instantly jerks her hand back with a muttered curse as the air around it crackles with a painful current of energy.

"No," she replies dryly. "It isn't."

"Y'know we still get to eat for free at all the Biggerson's in the country – we could do a nationwide tour!"

"Dean, the shelf life on corn syrup is crazy long, and even if we knew they were safe to eat in again, I'm pretty sure they took us off the eat-free list once we hit the news as mass murderers. Multiple times."

"Details, details." Dean rolls his eyes, obviously only half-paying attention, absorbed on his phone. "Here, I emailed you something."

Sam sighs, and cautiously opens the email, half-expecting a virus to freeze his iPhone or a video to start screaming at him from the page, but it's a fairly harmless link to a…somewhat unusual webpage.

"…What."

"It will be hilarious!"

"No, really, what."

"C'mon, Sam!"

"Are you serious?"

"You got a better idea? It'll be entertaining, at least, which is more than I can say for your last suggestion of visiting the states in friggin' alphabetical order, genius. And anyway, that's the fun in a road trip! When was the last time we actually took one, without being on the way to or from a case?"

Sam thinks for a moment. "Geez, Dean, I dunno…maybe right after we found the Bunker?" He smiles, remembering those early, early days with a mixture of fondness and nostalgic bitterness. "You were going stir-crazy there for a while that first winter, I think we drove down South right after New Year's? Hit up New Orleans, you got sloshed one night at a seafood buffet and tried to take out a harmless old crone thinking she was a voodoo priestess. That was, what, thirty years ago?"

"Damn. We got old, Sammy."

"Speak for yourself, gramps. Ow! Get off me, you jerk!"

Billie turns to glare at the King of Hell, who is currently sitting at the table drinking out of a dusty decanter of aged brandy and cackling his head off.

"You find this amusing, demon?"

"Sweetheart, you've been out-Winchestered. Why don't you just admit it, and save us all the bloody headache?"

"How will that help us in escaping this room?" Castiel demands, having already discovered that the modified devil's trap is in actuality a broad-stroke magical ward that apparently has been specifically constructed to trap anything supernatural inside. Angel, demon, reaper, they all are going nowhere fast.

"It won't."

Castiel turns on his heel and sends a glare which could extinguish hell-fire toward the demon. "Did you know this would happen?"

Crowley looks boredly over top of the decanter. "Not a clue. I do, however, know that Dean Winchester was uncontrollable as a mere human. As a disembodied soul? I can only imagine. And that brother of his, well. No telling what they can do together, as a bonded pair."

"Experiment, Georgia?"

"Uh, no." Sam's voice is muffled, torso buried in the back seat as he wrestles with the cooler lid. It's a small supernatural miracle in itself, that the ancient thing has lasted so many decades (with so many bizarre things inside it at some point) and still functions as well as the day John Winchester stole it from a Midwestern K-Mart parking lot however many years ago, when money was non-existent and Dean needed to keep ice on a sprained ankle after a hunt. "Absolutely not. It's like, two hundred degrees down there this time of year."

Dean shrugs, surfs one hand lazily out the open window of the Impala as they trundle down a deserted highway in West Virginia. "'S almost peach season, though, Sam. Love me some peach pie."

Sam reappears with a huff, blowing a lock of damp, curling hair off his forehead, and holds up two bottles that glisten with the chilly promise of refreshment. Orange cream soda, that horribly, amazingly saccharine-sweet brand that went bankrupt when they were just kids. God, he loves magic sometimes.

"Dude, maybe I should've just structured this spell around your stomach."

"Hey, the soul wants what the soul wants, Sammy. Gimme my damn root beer."

Another miniature earthquake rocks the Bunker's foundations and the table turns to dust under the force of a pissed-off reaper trying to break unbreakable warding.

"Oi, Khaleesi, calm yourself. This suit is vintage Armani."

Billie turns his chair to dust as well with one smooth gesture as she passes on her way to the door, flinging an incantation like a fury-honed weapon at the magical warding, which accomplishes absolutely nothing.

Crowley picks himself up off the floor with a mutter of discontent and edges closer to Castiel. The angel merely regards him with a mixture of boredom and mild revulsion.

"Why, exactly, is she here anyway?" the demon asks in an undertone.

Castiel sighs, an expressive human gesture he has always found vaguely satisfying despite the fact that this vessel does not need to breathe. "She has been threatening for years to cast Sam and Dean's souls into the Empty, as a final solution to their habit of being reincarnated by various methods supernatural and otherwise."

Crowley blinks thoughtfully. "Not that I wouldn't love to see the little blighters finally out of our hair for good this time, but isn't that a bit, well…overkill?"

"What other reason would draw me from the recent outbreak of civil war in heaven?"

"Not to be unkind here, lovely, but you really are the Sweet By-and-By's dimmest angel if you think you've got anywhere near the juice to take on a reaper with her kind of firepower."

"I had to try," the angel mutters dolefully. "I vowed on my Grace to Mary Winchester, that I would make the attempt at rescuing Sam and Dean's souls."

"Always such a sentimentalist, Castiel. Look, we have a bit bigger problems right now, shall we put aside the divvying-up-of-the-Winchesters issue in favor of placating the angry killing machine over there?"

They give Hell, Michigan a wide berth. Just on principle.

"I thought reapers were on your payroll anyway, Crowley."

"Oh, they are, Castiel, most of them. But this charming little Queen of the Dead? Not a bloody chance. Even the Grand Old Man himself used to complain about how he was half-afraid he'd end up impaled on his own scythe one day because of that one's ambition."

"Believe me, Crowley, were it not for the fact that the resulting imbalance of power is simply not worth the trouble, you would be the first to follow the Grand Old Man, as you put it," drifts pleasantly, razor-sharp, from across the room.

Castiel sighs, and waves a hand at the wall before him, lighting it up once more in bright blue highlight. After careful examination, he attempts to break two of the most crucial binding sigils, thinking that perhaps because they do not have any references to angels and are not Enochian in origin, he may be able to crack the concrete of the wall beneath them at least and thereby break their seal upon this room.

To his surprise, not only does the wall and its sigils hold fast, but the entire room lights up in flashing crimson, as a klaxon begins to wail in warning somewhere overhead. Alarmed, he takes a step backward, for heaven only knows with what devices a devious Winchester may have booby-trapped the place.

Fortunately, nothing more harmful happens than the projector across the room whirring suddenly into life with an ancient groan, stuttering for a few moments before abruptly throwing a picture onto the opposite wall, eerily outlined now in bright blue warding.

"Greetings, one and all," an annoyingly familiar voice fills the enclosed space with a smug overtone, accompanied by a smirk that is just this side of condescending. "I hope you're enjoying your stay in Casa Winchester?"

"Should I –"

"Oh, hell, no."

Dean's grin is slightly on the filthy side, and why did he ever show the idiot how to Snapchat, anyway. If one more picture surfaces of Sam asleep in the passenger seat, face swapped with Colonel Saunders on the KFC cup currently rolling around in the Impala somewhere under their feet…

"Sam! Take the damn picture already!"

Sam cringes, wishing he could hide behind something as a minivan rockets past them, the driver shooting him a disapproving glare while two screaming hellions pound on the back windows. Dean, of course, only waves at the entourage, beaming angelically.

Sam snaps the picture with a sigh, and hands the phone back to his brother.

"Dude, that's awesome." His brother's leering grin is enough to net him no more than a mild beep of warning from a passing convertible when he wanders back into the road to open the driver's side door. "And you said there was nothing interesting in Alaska."

"I said, if we were going to Alaska, I wanted to take a cruise. Not drive for hours up the coastline and end up in a tiny fishing town called Chicken. Which makes zero sense, by the way."

Dean revs the engine and pulls back on the highway, blowing a kiss at the I got laid in Chicken, Alaska sign he just made Sam take his picture with.

"How long's it been since we went fishing, anyway?"

Sam peers at him warily. "They don't do it with a pole and a worm up here, Dean, this is serious business; boats and nets and freezing water and –"

"And you're a real pain in the ass when you can't get your precious wifi, you know that?"

From off-screen, a projectile is lobbed at Dean Winchester's head, and the man ducks instinctively with well-honed brotherly reflexes. "As I was saying," he continues without skipping a beat, "I'm sure you figured out by now that my nerdy little brother can actually cast a pretty damn good containment spell, combined with a little devil's trap magic of my own invention."

Some rather creative swearing from the demon beside Castiel causes him a twinge of mean human amusement.

"We know why you're here, the three of you," Dean continues his pre-recorded message, gesticulating grandly as if speaking to a massive audience instead of just a trio. "Everybody just wants a piece of this, now don't they?"

"Dean!" Sam's voice from off-screen, obviously exasperated. "Stick to the script!"

An expressive eyeroll. "Killjoy. Fine." The elder Winchester turns back to the camera, and gives it a smirk that is almost evil. "Sorry to disappoint, gentlemen – and lady – but me and Sam, well, we don't like to share. You're gonna have to find somebody else's souls to fight over, because you're getting no piece of mine, or his."

Castiel eyes their reaper companion with trepidation, for her eyes are sparking black fire.

"How's that work? So glad you asked."

"Believe me, we didn't," Crowley mutters, sitting back down with an air of resignation.

"See, we figured based on recent events and that last little chat with the Grimmest Reaper there that we probably were running out of time on this craphole we call earth."

"Genius," Billie drawls.

"And so we thought," Dean gestures vaguely at the room around him, then shrugs, "since when do we just let the universe screw us over?"

Sam Winchester's unamused face appears in the left corner of the screen. "To be fair, it's been doing that for like five decades now."

"Shut up, dude, you're ruining my monologue."

"We are running out of time, Dean – the ingredients will only last another three minutes so spit it out and let's go!"

"Geez, keep your panties on, Samantha. I'm coming. Start the car and I'll be right there. Anyway," and the elder Winchester turns back toward the camera as his brother hurries from the room, "I know it's a huge disappointment but we're not coming with any of you. Sorry, Cas, that means you too."

The angel takes a step backward as two pairs of eyes settle on him accusingly. "I knew nothing of this, I am as surprised as you," he protests.

"Leave him alone, you really think I'd spill our plans to someone whose past or present BFF is the King of Hell? No offense, Cas, but we all know Crowley's gonna stab you in the back the first chance he gets if it gives him a high of some kind. Sorry, but we couldn't take the risk. The three of you can fight it out amongst yourselves all you want, but none of you are getting your hands on our souls."

"Like I would want either of you lot anywhere near my kingdom," the demon scoffs, clearly offended. "You think I'd disrupt the delicate balance of power by bringing in a Winchester? Please."

"I do not see how he thinks they will remain off the grid, so to speak," Castiel muses, still staring at the screen and Dean Winchester's smug expression. "To conceal one's soul from a Reaper would take far more Old Magic than either of them is capable of wielding."

"So you're probably wondering why you can't sense us, Billie."

The reaper only blinks impassively at the screen, the anger of before having been funneled back into a carefully blank expression.

"See, my brother has this habit of digging up obscure spellwork and random crap from the Letters archives that ends up being, well. Pretty damn effective, if I do say so myself." Dean smirks, and picks up his duffle, tosses what looks like a shining glass bottle into the air and catches it with one hand. "This?" he asks, gesturing with its neck toward the camera, "is the receptacle for a soul-binding spell – Cas, you can read about it in Charlie's diary, it's in her old bedroom." Sadness tinges the man's eyes for a moment before he continues. "Sam's adapted it a little, but it's basically the same as the one we dealt with before, with Dorothy and the Witch. Ten minutes from now, and we'll be out of your hair for good – me, Sam, and Baby, he managed to work enough mojo into the spell to get her out of here too."

"What?!" The exclamation rattles the glass of the drinkware on the nearby sideboard, and Crowley eyes the reaper with trepidation.

"Oh, not like you can't release us by just breaking the spell, any of you," Dean says, eyeing the bottle in his hand for a moment. "But there's a price for that," he adds suddenly, looking up with a dangerously pleasant smile.

"Are you for real right now, Sam?"

"Seriously, that's its name – Imalone, Wisconsin." Sam snickers, putting a question mark beside the town as a possible maybe for the future. He scribbles a note in the margin of the map, and folds it in half to fit better across the narrow motel bed. For some reason, Dean insists upon buying paper maps whenever he can at convenience stores across the country. Sam prefers his iPad and Google Maps, but he suspects Dean's peculiarity stems unconsciously from hours spent in the backseat of the Impala as children, playing Hangman and tic-tac-toe on every available whitespace in Dad's road atlases.

"Imalone. That's just pathetic, dude."

"Your face is pathetic."

"Uh, yeah, how d'you think we got this room for half-price?" Dean demands proudly. "Sixty-four and counting, and I still got it."

"Somehow, I do not think we will wish to pay that price."

"Bloody understatement, that."

"If you want us badly enough, you can get us back, fellas. And lady. You can break the spell, return us to the world at the age we were when we activated the spell – we didn't want to leave you without an out, in case we're needed. But to do that?" Dean smirks, and salutes them with the bottle. "Each of you has to give up your, well, let's say your supernatural mojo to do it. The ritual's on Sam's laptop in the library. You need us bad enough, you can get us back – but bye-bye angel, reaper, and demon. You'll just have to learn to live with humanity when you do get us back. And without your mojo, none of you will be able to have an effect on our fate when we arrive, now will you?"

For a moment the three supernatural beings stare at the screen in stunned silence.

Sam sighs, finishes a game of mahjong on his tablet while he waits for his brother to stop cackling.

"Who the hell comes up with these?" Dean asks, finally wheezes his way back to reality, still snickering. "Seriously, Lick Skillet?"

Sam pushes the almost-empty coffee carafe across the table so Dean can finish it before they hit the road again. "It's Alabama, I've come across a lot of weird ones in the South. There's a whole website apparently for Toast, North Carolina."

"But Sammy, Lick Skillet. How is that even real. And why the hell did you leave me only like two ounces of this crap. You expect me to drive all the way to 'bama on this?"

"I'm sure there's someplace that serves breakfast in Toast."

Sam ducks as Dean's half-eaten biscuit is pitched at his head with unerring accuracy, earning them a disapproving look from the weary server behind the counter.

They both agree, though, that it's worth the drive to discover the best stuffed French Toast this side of the Mississippi River. Dean actually eats so much he has to let Sam complete the drive to Lick Skillet, because he's basically in a food coma.

Sam waits until Dean's half-asleep and then blares Aerosmith out of his iPod as loudly as it will go through the jack he's stealthily plugged in.

"You have ten seconds to take out the trash before I do it for you, Sam."

"Bloody hell, that's brilliant."

"Crowley…"

"I mean it, though," the demon declares, grinning. "You can't out-Winchester a Winchester. Can you, my dear?"

The reaper stares in silence at the screen, as if she is really looking at the elder Winchester and not merely an image of him.

It is Dean who breaks the silence, with the twitch of a smile and a sloppy salute. "Better be going, if I don't want Sam to take off on this shindig without me. Take care of yourself, Cas. Sam said you can still dreamwalk with us in this state, by the way, so feel free to try it. Crowley, feel free not to try it." He turns, weirdly in sync, to face Billie, and smirks. "Sorry, beautiful. It's been fun, but, well. Y'know I never have been good at taking orders."

The screen shuts off abruptly, the projector whirs to a wheezing halt, and then both leave the room in startled silence. The warding just as suddenly also powers down, the glowing azure fading into a pale, sickly blue before dying altogether.

"Well. I don't know about you lot, but I have no desire to become one of these pathetic humans just to resurrect those two miserable little specimens of the species, so adieu to you both." And with that, the demon is gone as silently as he had appeared. A moment later, Castiel follows his example, realizing that his presence is unwelcome and unnecessary.

Billie stares as the angel disappears up the stairs, a loud clang a moment later heralding his exit from the Bunker, and then she moves to the warmly-lit main study room of this Men of Letters headquarters, where a small bottle rests oddly out of place in the very center of the primary study table. She lifts it carefully, and looks down at the golden mist hovering inside, threaded with swirling patches of sparkling blue and occasional strands of dangerous black. The tingling energy seems to react instinctively to her presence, shying away from the sides of the container, and she sets the bottle back down, careful to not topple it on the rough surface.

Honestly, these Winchesters. Death would be beside himself with glee if he were still around, to learn of their resourcefulness, and their rebellion. Nature itself should be revolting at the sheer ridiculousness of their ability to thwart destiny.

But she merely turns away and disappears into the Between, weaving one last protective enchantment over the Bunker to hide it forever from the public view. And if she smiles, just a little, as the veils between the worlds close upon her exit, well. No one is there to see.

Perhaps, like the legends of King Arthur of old, there will come a day, many centuries into the future, when the world will once again have need of a Winchester – and on that day, perhaps humanity will be a small price to pay for their return. But until then?

Until then…

"Uhhh…I really don't think given our particular type of luck we should be tempting fate by visiting a town named Accident, Dean."

"Nope, driver makes the rules, Sam, you promised. We got all the time in the world, and we are gonna hit up every freaking weirdass city in the country and get the postcards to prove it. Imma make a mural out of 'em when this trip ends. If it ever ends."

Sam sighs, and finishes off his smoothie with a slurp before tossing the cup into the plastic bag that functions as their makeshift trash can. Dean had kicked off this new leg of their road trip with visiting a haunted house in Frankenstein, Missouri, and insisted upon staying the night in Okay, Oklahoma before heading down to Pie Town, New Mexico (Sam had done a quick phone search and had not yet disillusioned his brother that no, the entire town was not themed around the dessert). He scans quickly over Dean's ever-increasing list of proposed city-hopping and groans aloud; he had no idea the United States even had such a huge number of bizarrely named towns, and the list seems to grow every day they spend on this trip. He briefly contemplates the possibility of an infinite loop of cities, due to the ever-expanding population of the States, but that actually would only reinforce the stability of the spell – so it's basically a win-win for them.

Dean is still defending his choice of ridiculous destinations and his very flimsy logic for choosing those particular ones. "You're the one who said this thing needed some long-term structure or the spell would disintegrate!"

"That doesn't mean we need to spend a day in Pee Pee, Ohio!"

"Dude." Dean's eyebrows wiggle suggestively. "It's just a pitstop on the way to Intercourse. Pennsylvania."

"God, I hate you."

"Aw, Sammy, you're the one who had the idea to spend the next however many decades trapped in a bottle with me."

"A decision I'm regretting more and more every time you make it weird like that."

Dean just grins at him, eyes dancing with a freedom they never had before. Steps on the accelerator, pats the dashboard lovingly as she responds with a roar of agreement.

Cranks up the radio, and heads off into the perpetual sunset.