As the Impala roared down the road, Dean's mind was swimming with the most disturbing things. No small feat, considering what he'd been through, but this was a new one, for sure. Cas was God now. Was that even possible? Far be it from the Winchester's to question all the crazy shit that went down around them, but this was seriously more than he thought he could take.

He glanced at Sam, who sat in the passenger seat, shaking ever so slightly. On top of Cas becoming God by sucking souls in like a milkshake through a straw, Sam remembered Hell. He could recall every last thing that happened to him in the pit, every sick little pleasure Lucifer had taken with Sam as the target. Not to mention whatever it was Michael may have done. At the thought, Dean growled low in his throat, causing Sam to look over at him sharply.

"What do we do now, Dean?" he asked, the most he'd said since the whole ordeal had occurred.

Dean sighed. "I don't know, Sam. I guess we just go back to being normal hunters. Small jobs. I mean, what else can we do? Sit on our hands and wait for Castiel to kill us?"

It wasn't a pleasant thought.

He still wasn't sure how they'd gotten away from Cas that night. It'd been a week ago, and he still had no solid recollection of it. He remembered some kind of vague light, and a woman's voice. But that was it, and even that was hazy. Time had seemed to stop, and when it picked back up he'd had no idea how long it'd been, or what had transpired during their escape.

He wasn't even sure what had happened to Castiel.

About an hour or so after waking up, they'd gotten a call from Bobby, so they knew he was alright. But they hadn't figured out how just yet. It was the mystery he'd been pondering to himself for days. Whatever had gotten them out had to show up eventually.

Sam sighed, rubbing his forehead. He'd been doing that a lot this past week, rubbing his head and speaking in monosyllables. It was understandable. Dean remembered Hell, too, and he'd never been at the mercy of Satan himself. Still, Sam seemed to be pulling himself together, as evidenced by his apparent return to his normal, know it all, blabbermouth self.

"Is that really all you think we should do, Dean? I mean, c'mon. Even if he isn't really God, or a god, or anything like that, he's still more powerful than anything we've ever seen. You know that. And you want us to just twiddle our thumbs and kill a few monsters while we wait for him to show up and gank us?" Sam's eyes were wide and he had that exasperated look on his face. Dean knew he should be irritated at his brother's attitude, but he was just glad to see him acting like himself again. A whole paragraph from him was like a miracle in and of itself. Still, Dean wasn't too happy with Sam arguing with him over it.

"What do you propose we do then, Sammy? Huh? We know nothing about what he is now, we know nothing about how to hunt him, how to stop him. For all we know, he really is God now. How are we supposed to stop that?"

Sam frowned, seeing his brother's point but not wanting to admit it. He glanced at the newspaper at his feet in the floorboard.

"So, where're we headed, then? You got a case, or are we just driving around?"

The headline on the paper was nothing spectacular, just a normal story about some school kids being found with drugs. Sam vaguely remembered passing through the town it talked about a couple days before, so that wasn't Dean's target.

"I got nothing," he replied, confirming Sam's suspicion. Dean didn't know where they were going. They were just driving to drive, to get away from where it had happened. Sam had absolutely no problem with that.

"Well, let's stop at a diner or something nearby, I'll look some stuff up and you can call Bobby," Sam said, though he knew that might be a while. They were in the middle of nowhere at the moment, driving down a long, two lane stretch of highway with trees growing on either side and curving over to form a tunnel. It was a familiar sight for the brothers, and not one they particularly cared for. Driving on these roads always seemed to herald an unexpected case, some monster on the side of the road or a backwoods small town that wasn't on the map. Sam remembered the case Dean had worked alone while they'd been looking for their father, where one of those small towns had been full of religious fanatics who sacrificed one of their own every harvest to a god in the guise of a scarecrow.

Dean had almost been dinner that night.

The same case was weighing heavily on his mind as he drove, apparently, because he glanced at Sam and said, "I'm not sure if that's such a good idea. God-"

He cut himself off with a wince. He'd been about to say, 'God only knows,' but that seemed like a bad statement to make at the moment.

"… I mean, who know what we'll come across?" was his recovery. "It might be better to just wait until we get somewhere… less remote," he finished.

Sam nodded in agreement, but to be honest, he was a little on edge about the whole thing. He didn't like driving down this deserted road in the middle of the night with no destination. He really wished that he could pull up his laptop and look for something, some kind of lead to somewhere, but he doubted he'd get any signal to use the internet here. Even if the trees wouldn't block it, there was little chance of any kind of satellite beaming information to a place where no one was asking for it.

Besides, they hadn't seen a road off this one in ages, not even a dirt road leading to a small town or a farmhouse. Sam was grateful that Dean had the foresight to keep gallons of gas in the backseat and trunk when they'd started driving. If he hadn't, they'd have run out ages ago.

The thought made Sam twitch for some reason. Something seemed wrong, but he couldn't place it. Something had wriggled in the back of his head, trying to push its way to the surface, but it had been forced back for some reason. Sam closed his eyes and retraced his thoughts, trying to get it to bubble up again. Something was off about this… what was the thought he'd had? When it came to him, his eyes shot open and he leaned forward.

"Dean! Something's going on, this isn't-"

He was cut off by Dean suddenly hitting the brake. The tires squealed as the car spun out, coming to a stop barely a foot from two women, standing in the middle of the road.

"…real…"