Author's Note: It's been a little while since I posted the first chapter. I wanted to get it up before I went on vacation but what can I say? My fondness for procrastinating got the best of me.
Also yo: for future reference, in this story Metatron never did the thing to Castiel where he gets references because that was one of the stupidest and most pointless things to ever happen in the show and looking back at season 9... that's saying something.
Gabriella shrunk back in her seat as the brothers practically climbed over their chairs to try to shake Castiel awake. He refused to respond.
Once they determined he was merely unconscious and not dead, Dean started driving again and insisted they go to the nearest hospital.
"Dean, I'd love to be able to do that, but we're not sure this is something they can treat. He hurt himself from using too much of his grace, I don't exactly think there's been much research on how to treat that. Besides, we have America's Most Wanted in the back seat. We can't stay anywhere unless it's warded as well as the bunker."
"Sam, the bunker's still hours away. This is Cas. We have to help him."
"For some reason I don't picture him unconscious near a demon magnet as particularly helpful."
Dean's fingers tightened on the steering wheel. He knew his brother was right, but he wasn't happy about it.
It was a long time before they got back to the bunker. Few rest stops were allowed and Dean went well over the speed limit, desperately trying to shorten the distance between them and the bunker as quickly as possible. He resisted the temptation of sleep for a long time, and when he decided he had to give in, he even let Sam take the wheel for a few hours.
When they finally burst through the doors, Dean carrying Castiel in his arms, the angel still hadn't woken. He laid him down on the couch and knelt by him.
"Sam, do we have any smelling salts?" Would they even work on him? It's worth a shot.
"Yeah. I'll get them." He ran off.
"Prophet girl, did you have any visions about how to help us now?" Dean looked up from Castiel for the first time since they got to the bunker.
"N-no, I'm sorry." Her voice was almost a whisper.
"Great. You're a real help now." Dean muttered.
Sam came back in the room with a bottle of salts that he held under Castiel's nose. They waited, and nothing happened.
"Dammit. What do we do now?"
Sam shrugged. "We wait for him to wake up on his own."
Dean looked as if he was going to argue, but then nodded, realizing there was no other option.
"Alright. It's late, and I guess we all need some sleep. Sam, go get her crap out of the trunk and let her pick a room. I'll stay out here in case something happens."
Sam nodded and went to empty the trunk. Gabriella stood there silently until he returned and gave her one of the bags to carry.
"Okay, follow me." He led her through a hall.
As soon as they got out of earshot from Dean she got more comfortable with talking. "Is he always like this?"
"What? Oh, no. He's just worried about Cas, I'm sure he'll warm up to you."
"What happened? To, um, Cas?"
"It's sort of complicated. See, angels run on grace, and he's running out of it, but he decided to use it to heal Dean out of a coma. He told me he could do it, but it's pretty clear he didn't have enough-"
"Oh, so he did it for Dean. That adds that 'it's all because of me' factor. Worried and guilty. Makes sense now."
"Yeah, sure," Sam said. "Look, here's your room." He dropped the bags he was holding in it and started to walk away. "See you in the morning."
"Wait." The prophet called after him, making him turn around. "I'll be honest, I slept most of the ride back, I'm not really tired, but we didn't make many stops for food. Do you have anything to eat? Maybe just a bowl of cereal or something?"
Sam gave her a small smile. "Yeah, and I'm a little hungry too. Come on, we'll find something."
The bunker wasn't stacked with food at this point, but there was indeed cereal. Sam poured two bowls and sat down at a small table across from Gabriella. There were only the sounds of them chewing and their spoons clinking against the bowls for a while.
"So," Gabriella started. "Why exactly are all these things after me?"
"You're a prophet. They have this tablet they want you to read, and if they get that information they could do some pretty big stuff. Not good stuff."
"Wait, hang on. A prophet? Like-"
"-Of the Lord? Yes."
"Wow." She chuckled. "I thought when Dean called me prophet girl it was some sort of joke because I had that vision, but- wow."
"Yeah, you're a pretty big deal."
They both returned to focusing on their bowls. Gabriella finished hers first and left the spoon in it, shoving it aside. "So what exactly am I going to be doing here?"
"Staying safe, mostly. This place is warded against basically everything. It's the only place where you won't get attacked. Dean and I might get that tablet for you to read and help us."
"So I'm just going to be stuck in this place?" Gabriella crinkled her nose. "I mean, don't get me wrong, it's a nice place, but staying inside for the rest of my life isn't ideal."
"Just until things cool down a bit, and we'd have to train you in case we run into something. And of course we'll have to get you a tattoo first."
"A tattoo?" She repeated.
"Yes." Sam pulled the neckline of his shirt down to display his own. "It's so you can't get possessed by a demon."
"My mom says I'm not allowed to get tattoos." Gabriella looked down as she realized something. "But I'm never going to see her again, am I?"
Sam sighed. "Anyone you contact is going to be put in danger. They will try to find the people you care about and they will use them against you. It's better this way."
She gave a small nod. "I heard you say that before, in my dream. It was part of that speech where you told me I couldn't come back. I told you not to say it because I thought maybe if you didn't say it in real life, outside the vision, maybe it wouldn't be as real. Maybe if I didn't ask I'd be able to talk to my mom." She let out a harsh laugh, looking at the ceiling and wiping away a few stray tears. The room turned to silence as she tried to think of something else to say. She wanted to stop thinking about it, and she didn't want Sam to think of her as oversensitive for crying.
"So, do like, werewolves and vampires exist too?" She had been wanting to ask this for a while.
"Yes."
"Are they hot, like in all the books?"
Sam was about to say no, but his mind flickered to Madison. "Well, um, you know what? It is late. You should get to sleep soon. I trust you can find your room again?" He stood from his chair and grabbed the bowls, having finished his own cereal by this point. He brought them to the sink and started washing them.
Gabriella grinned as she had given him a "Goodnight" before standing and finding her way back to her room. She thought of how this world might not be too terrible after all.
Gabriella managed to rest for a few hours, but woke at around 5 AM and couldn't seem to sleep again. She decided to wander the bunker for a while. When she got close to the room they had left Dean and Castiel in, she heard a faint whimper of pain. She peeked in on them and saw the one in the trench coat squirming on the couch, covered in sweat and mumbling to himself between short sounds of pain. She saw Dean on a chair next to him, whose lack of sleep must have caught up with him. Figuring he would want to be aware of his friend's change of condition and might possibly know what to do better than she did, Gabriella went over to him and poked him awake.
"Dean? Excuse me?"
"What do you want?" he grumbled, still half asleep.
"Your friend, he's-"
Dean had jolted awake at this. "Cas?" He took in the scene in front of him. "Cas!" He knelt on the floor in front of the couch. The angel's movements became more frantic and his whimpers turned to yells.
"Get Sam!" Dean barked at Gabriella. She didn't move, and it took him a moment to realize she wouldn't know where he was. He glanced at Castiel again, not wanting to leave him. He stood up and grumbled something about a "stupid prophet" and told her to watch Castiel.
She knelt beside the angel, writhing and screaming by this point. She didn't expect it to help, but she reached out and held one of his hands steady between her own as he shook. A few moments later, it stopped. It wasn't gradual, he was thrashing about one moment, and the next his motions stilled completely, he was cut off mid-scream, as if he was frozen. Or dead.
Gabriella was startled by the sudden lack of movement. She let go of his hand and panicked. Could he be-
Suddenly his eyes flew open and he sat up.
"Oh, Jesus Christ!" She yelled as she jumped back a bit.
She heard the two sets of rushed footsteps approaching as the man on the couch rose to his feet. "He was writhing and yelling and-" He let out a sigh as he walked into the room. "He's fine." Dean walked over to the angel. "Cas, man, you scared me." He brought him into a hug, then pulled away. "What the hell happened to you?"
"Healing you used a lot of grace in a short amount of time. It nearly destroyed this body, and staying awake while being injured only used more of it. To survive, the body had to be temporarily dead so the grace could recover enough to slowly heal it until it was sustainable again."
"Dammit, Cas." Dean wiped his face with his hand. "Did you know this was going to happen?"
"No." The angel paused. "I thought it would be worse."
Dean restrained himself from punching him. "Why the hell did you do it then? I could have gotten help from someone else, and you go and almost kill yourself over it-"
"Because I'm dying anyway!" He shouted. The room filled with silence.
"What?" Dean's voice was lowered to almost a whisper.
Castiel looked up at him in a way that somehow made him seem as if he were the taller one looking down.
"If I hadn't used the grace at all, I'd have about a year left. It's burning up, no matter what I do. My best guess is that I cut that time in half. I'm hoping you'll get more than six months out of that, and it'll be a fair trade."
"Stop talking like that. Okay, you screwed up, you have six months left. We can find your own grace in that time."
"Dean."
"We could get another angel's grace to help buy us some time."
"Dean. I'm not going to take anyone else's grace, not after heaven just returned to some sort of- normal. I'd rather not start any more conflicts."
"Fine. Then we hurry and find-"
"Don't you see, Dean? There's no grace to find. It got used up in that spell. Gone. I've had everyone searching for it, but it simply doesn't exist anymore."
"We could turn you into a human again." Dean was getting desperate now. "Can't you just take out the rest of the grace now and become human?"
"When an angel takes another's grace, it poisons him. There's no way to get it back out without killing him. I knew what was going to happen when I took it, and you're going to have to accept it too. I'm dying, and there's no way to stop it."
