A/N - This chapter has an unusual amount of short scenes; it's really a lot of vignettes about life in the bunker. The calm before the storm.
Days slid by with no word from Crowley.
The contract he'd written out, that evening by the banks of the Missouri, had specified that he'd work "with all possible haste and all due diligence." But it had not promised that he'd find the grace instantly, and Crowley had steadfastly refused to add any such "totally unfair clauses", as he'd put it.
So day after day drifted by. November tightened its gray chilly hold on northern Kansas; the last of the leaves fell from the trees around the bunker. Dean had to force himself to relax and try not to be on tenterhooks every day about whether Crowley would succeed, whether today they'd hear from him, whether the "associates" would negotiate or not.
Fortunately Cas was actually doing okay. He still wasn't exactly healing, but he wasn't right at death's-door either, and both Sam and Dean began to feel a little hopeful that he might have a little more time than they'd feared. But a foreboding sense of limited time seemed to be hanging over the bunker, and Sam and Dean agreed privately not to take any more cases while Cas was still so weak. If Cas got his grace back soon, then they could all go on hunts again. If he didn't...
Well, they didn't actually talk about that possibility.
But Dean noticed how Sam started making every tasty meal that he could think of, all sorts of stir-fries and home-made pizzas and special salads, and, yes, the cakes; everything Sam thought Cas might like. While Dean, for his part, found he kept coming home with new movies for Cas to watch, or shows he thought Cas might enjoy, or music he thought Cas should hear. Or just taking him on little drives in the Impala to some local parks, to show him the last of the fall colors.
So, no more hunts for now. They'd agreed.
But then the lightning strikes started hitting the news.
And then the hurricanes.
In the second week of November, a weird series of hundreds of lightning strikes began hitting buildings, trees, and even some unfortunate people, all up and down the West Coast. A week later, a set of tornados went roaring through Ohio that seemed almost to be striking towns on purpose, hopscotching across the landscape from town to town with bizarrely targeted jumps, striking heavily populated areas with deadly accuracy.
Dean didn't really notice it too much at first. Till one night when Sam was poking around on his laptop. Cas was conked out on the library sofa again — Sam had just read him off to sleep with a few chapters from "Ozma of Oz" — and Sam had taken the opportunity to check up on the news.
A few minutes later Sam called to Dean quietly from across the long wooden table, saying, "Dean. Did you realize there's been a Category 5 hurricane hitting the East Coast every single week for the past five weeks?"
"Oh, that doesn't sound good," said Dean. He got up and walked around the table to peer over Sam's shoulder at the laptop. "I guess I heard something about hurricanes in the news, but didn't realize it was getting that unusual."
"Worst hurricane season in history, Dean," said Sam. "Take a look." He tilted the laptop toward Dean. "And. Dean. Also it's been the worst tornado season, and kind of out-of-season, too. And also, the most lightning strikes ever recorded in one year."
Dean skimmed the news article. Sam then clicked a few keys to get to some NOAA weather maps. Which showed masses of lightning strikes, and tornadoes virtually carpeting the Midwest, and what seemed like a really strange number of hurricanes and tropical storms sweeping up from the Atlantic Ocean toward the East Coast.
Dean said quietly, hoping not to wake Cas, "Dammit. That's... a ton of stuff. I didn't realize it was that many things all at once."
"Yeah. There's definitely something up. Lightning, tornadoes and now hurricanes? And it's all over the continent, and, get this, cyclones in the Pacific are up too. A lot of big waves, apparently. Every kind of storm possible, everywhere you look."
Dean frowned at the little maps. Even as they watched, a map refreshed with some more lightning strikes added. "Huh. This is so... widespread." Dean said, leaning over the table on both his hands to get a closer look. He said, "How would we even start with something like this? Where would we go? I mean, literally, where should we go, specifically?"
Sam shrugged, his mouth twisted in a little grimace. "That's the problem. I've got no idea where to go. I mean, look at that mess—" he gestured at the maps again— "I don't see any kind of cluster anywhere. No focal point. It's everywhere. Lightning to the west, tornadoes in the middle, hurricanes to the east. I don't really know how to start with a weather problem that's hitting the entire damn continent."
Sam began drumming his fingers on the table, and they both just looked at the NOAA maps for a moment.
Dean finally said, "If we tried to tackle any of this on our own it seems like we'd just be outmatched immediately. I mean, we could try... but... "
Sam shook his head, saying, "We have exactly zero clue what we're up against. I can totally see us heading out to try to do something and just getting zapped by lightning instantly."
Dean nodded. "And then Cas'd be stuck here on his own, too."
And then he couldn't help picturing, for a moment, just what that would be like for Cas. If Dean and Sam went off on a hunt and never came back.
It came with the territory, for hunters. And for hunters' friends, of course. But couldn't they just have a month or two of peace together? Just one month, maybe, while they tried to fix up Cas?
Sam got a rueful little grin on his face. He looked up at Dean and said, "Remember when we just had to tackle a ghost here or there? Maybe a monster? Maybe one demon, on a really bad day." The memory almost made Dean laugh. Sam added, "You know what I'm thinking?"
"What?"
"If we we learned one thing in Wyoming, we learned that when things get really major-league like this, we need an angel on our side." Sam dropped his voice even lower, to just a whisper, and said, "Maybe Cas'll get his grace back soon and we can deal with it then?"
Dean nodded, and whispered back. "So we stick to our plan. Such as it is."
"Such as it is," agreed Sam. "Stay here, take care of Cas, see if Crowley comes through. I'll keep researching in the meantime. Then when Cas is angel'd up, maybe he can help us try to tackle all this lightning-and-hurricane stuff."
When, Sam had said. When Cas is angel'd up. Not if.
Dean glanced at him, and Sam looked away.
They both automatically glanced over to the library, where they could just see the edge of Cas's sofa. From here, Dean could just see the top of Cas's head. Looked like Cas had just passed out there again, his face turned toward the warmth of the fire.
Cas seemed to be feeling cold more, this week. And sleeping more...
"Hey, maybe I'll get dinner started," said Sam. "Thought I'd try this pasta thing he might like. Maybe brownies for later?"
"Oh, I bet he'll like brownies. Good idea," said Dean. "And I picked up a couple more movies. The first Indiana Jones, and Ghostbusters. Think he'll like those?"
"Absolutely," said Sam, shutting the laptop. "He'll love 'em."
So November continued on. Unofficially it had become Take-Care-Of-Castiel Month.
Feeding him was a major priority. Cas was still way too thin and seemed only just able to maintain his weight if he ate more-or-less constantly. Dean tried to chip in, contributing his best burgers, and fajitas, and steaks - and then of course Cas got curious and Dean had to show him how to use a grill. Sam, meanwhile, was turning into practically a chef, turning out an impressive series of stir-fries and interesting salads and elaborate pesto things and smoothies and "all that healthy crap", as Dean called it.
Though Sam also seemed to have time, in between making all the healthy crap, to also produce a pretty steady stream of both devil's-food cakes and angel-food cakes. And then, of course, inevitably, Cas demanded that Sam show him how to bake. One thing led to another and suddenly the bunker was perpetually full of the aroma of cakes baking, and then cookies, then scones and muffins, and then cupcakes. And then, perhaps inevitably, pies.
The first few baking efforts included some seriously flawed chemistry experiments, several of which set off the smoke alarm and a few of which actually burst into flame. Cas learned (slowly) that salt shouldn't be swapped for sugar, or protein powder for flour, or baking soda for baking powder, or soy sauce for maple syrup. Dean got into gales of laughter over some of the failures, but Cas was undaunted and pretty soon he'd actually got a decent handle on it. "Dean, it turns out it's really just chemistry," he announced one evening, unveiling a pretty damn respectable cherry pie. "You just have to use the correct ingredients and keep the ratios consistent and use a timer."
After that it was Pie Bonanza every day.
Dean had no objections.
At night, though, Cas was still creeping out to do his night-time patrols. Finally Dean had a word with Sam and between the two of them they managed to take over most of the patrols and convince Cas to stay in bed for most of the night.
Yet still Cas drifted into Dean's room now and then. Even when Dean had had no nightmares; even when Cas wasn't patrolling. Increasingly often Dean woke in the middle of the night to find Cas just sitting there quietly at the foot of Dean's bed.
It reminded Dean eerily of the year when they'd first met. Back then, several times Dean had woken from a terrible dream of Hell, only to find the mysterious angel Castiel just sitting there on the edge of his bed. Usually Cas had just been staring away at the wall, with sort of a remote, sad look on his face that Dean had never quite been able to interpret.
Though, sometimes Cas had been watching him. Looking right at him. Yet with that same remote expression: distant, a little sad, yet focused right on him. Again... Dean had never quite been able to interpret that expression.
Back then Cas had seemed so mysterious. Frightening, even. Invulnerable. Dean had been bewildered, then, by why Cas kept showing up. Was he studying Dean? Planning something? Up to something?
It occurred to him now that maybe Castiel had just wanted some company.
It actually was kind of nice, in a weird way, to wake to find Cas just sitting there quietly. This whole thing about having someone "watch over you while you sleep" isn't really so bad, thought Dean. But Dean did always worry that Cas should be in bed sleeping, and of course there was also the don't-give-him-the-wrong-idea thing, so, whenever he woke to found Cas sitting there, he always felt obliged to chase Cas right back to his own bed.
Cas also ended up on the sofa in the tv room pretty often. Dean got a little out of control with the movies. Pirated copies he'd downloaded, stuff off Netflix, dvd's from the town library, even old VHS tapes from the thrift store for fifty cents a pop, Dean collected it all. It started out as just occasional movie nights, with Sam, Cas and Dean— well, and Meg— squished side-by-side on the couch. Then Sam eventually dragged another couch over to the tv so that Cas could stretch out. Eventually it sorted out into a little routine: Sam made the popcorn, Dean stayed on the main couch with Cas, Sam took the side couch. And if Cas fell asleep in the middle of a movie that Sam and Dean had already seen, Sam went off to do the dinner dishes while Dean stayed by Cas's side. It just seemed to help Cas feel able to truly relax and sleep more deeply, to have Dean there next to him, and Dean didn't really mind sitting there with him.
Dean didn't really mind at all.
Dean would just sit there with Cas, watching the end of the movie by himself. Or, reading one of Sam's Oz books. Or... just watching Cas sleep. Making sure the blanket was tucked around him; making sure he was breathing okay. (Ever since that night-time conversation about breathing, Dean had been feeling an odd responsibility to make sure Cas kept breathing while he slept). Or sometimes just watching his face. Studying the bruises, and the scars; trying to assess if they'd gotten worse.
If Cas happened to be oriented the right way, with his head near Dean, and if it seemed like he was sleeping soundly, Dean would sometimes stroke the hair back from Cas's forehead while he slept.
Special circumstances, Dean thought sometimes. Special category.
It didn't occur to him to try to define it more than that. He didn't need to.
The days kept ticking by with no word from Crowley. So Dean kept coming up with more lists of movies Cas needed to see, and Sam kept coming up with elaborate meal plans, and Cas kept baking pies. And almost every night Cas fell asleep there on the sofa, and Dean sat there with him, watching over him while he slept, ready to herd Cas off to his real bed whenever Cas finally woke.
After a few occasions when Sam and Dean both had to leave the bunker for shopping trips - leaving Cas all alone - Dean realized he really had better teach Cas how to load and shoot a shotgun and pistol, and how to clean and care for the guns. Just in case. So one bright sunny day in mid-November, on an afternoon when Cas actually seemed to have a bit of energy, Dean gave Cas a little tutorial on basic gun safety. (It turned out certain little details like, oh, not waving a loaded gun around randomly, and not pointing it at your friend, didn't come all that naturally to someone who'd spent millennia being able to instantly heal any injury.)
Then Sam and Dean took him outside to try some target practice on the classic Kansas-backyard-shooting-range they'd set up in a field outside the bunker. The bunker also had an indoor shooting range, of course, but the weather was so nice, and also it was fun to be able to set up really distant targets, even if nobody had a chance of hitting them.
Dean set up six beer cans for Cas fairly close, and another six about thirty paces away away. And then, just for fun, another six that were impossibly far off at the very edge of the field.
"All right, bucko," said Dean, walking back to Cas and Sam. He handed Cas his pistol, and watched while Cas carefully clicked off the safety. Dean said, "Give that a try. And remember, don't worry when you don't hit the far ones — they're really pretty far, it's just for practice, and it's normal to miss those—"
BLAM. BLAM. BLAM. Cas started firing, using the two-handed grip Dean had shown him, and instantly the six close cans flew off their plank, one at a time, and then the six farther ones. And then the six distant ones. Eighteen shots, eighteen cans hit.
Cas put the safety back on and lowered the gun. "Like that?" he said.
Dean and Sam glanced at each other. Dean walked over to the furthest line of cans and picked one up. It'd been hit dead center. He found another can, and another; dead center shots, all of them.
He walked back and showed them to Sam, who just shook his head and laughed.
"Did I do poorly?" said Castiel, looking back and forth between them.
"Um... no," said Dean.
"You might be able to try out for the U.S. Olympic team, Cas," said Sam, still looking at one of the cans. "These were all perfect shots."
"Oh. Is that unusual?"
"Yes," said Dean and Sam simultaneously.
"I did hone my vessel's vision," said Cas. "Back when I was an angel. Could that be why? Oh and... also I improved some of the reflexes and the hand-eye coordination. Perhaps some of that has remained?"
"That is just no fair," said Dean, tossing the cans on the ground. Sam just laughed.
Cas added, "I wanted to add ultraviolet vision, and infrared, and polarized light, and a magnetic sense. But it turns out you can't really work those into a human eye. Really too bad, actually. Polarized light is so helpful. And a built-in magnetic compass would have been handy. Also I really miss infrared. And the extra colors you get with a UV receptor... the sunset really doesn't look the same. Actually I don't understand why you don't feel half-blind all the time."
"I hadn't been feeling half-blind till you mentioned any of this," said Sam.
Dean cleared his throat. "Let's go work on your driving, Cas, huh?" said Dean. "Because suddenly I really need to feel better than you at something."
Sam snorted, and said to Dean, "I've got a feeling you're only going to be better than him at driving for about two more days, so you'd better make the most of it."
So Dean took Castiel out for some driving lessons.
Even despite Cas's weakened condition, it only took one day.
A week later Cas drove the Impala all the way to the far-away grocery store in Hastings. With his own Kansas driver's license, in the name of Cas T.L. Winchester, tucked in his jacket pocket. He was driving far too perfectly, even going the actual speed limit, but just the same Dean got so antsy sitting in the passenger seat that Sam threatened to blindfold him and stick him in the trunk. But they did manage to get to the store.
Dean had thought they'd just pick up some miscellaneous stuff and head right back home, just a little outing for Cas to practice driving, but once in the store Sam made a beeline to the meat section, dragging Dean along with him while Cas vanished into the baking aisle.
"How many pounds, do you think?" said Sam. "How much are you gonna want?"
Dean slowly realized that Sam was standing in front of a big freezer bin of frozen turkeys.
Sam must have noticed Dean's baffled look, for he laughed and said, "Thanksgiving, Dean. It's this holiday that usually happens at the end of November? That holiday when people eat a turkey? You might have heard of it?"
Dean had forgotten.
Sam reached into the freezer bin, rolling the big round frozen turkeys around to check their weights, "I thought maybe we could do the whole thing, turkey and stuffing and everything— what do you think? Cas hasn't ever had a Thanksgiving. He doesn't really get the idea, actually, but I told him it's just a big meal with a turkey and pies, and now he has like three different pies he wants to try making. So, how about it? A real Thanksgiving dinner for once?"
For some reason Dean felt weirdly disturbed by this idea, but he nodded quietly, and then trailed along after Sam and Cas as they loaded a cart full of food.
Two days later, on Thanksgiving Day, Dean was sitting at the kitchen table with Cas and Sam, watching Sam carve up a ridiculously huge turkey. And all Dean could think, over and over, was This is very strange. This is really really strange. Not bad, of course— it was all good. Sam's turkey had come out great, and Cas's pies were ridiculously amazing (apple, pumpkin and mixed-berry). And they had also ended up with no less than ten side dishes— Cas had wanted to try all the classic ones and once again Sam had been totally unable to hold back.
It was good. It was all good. It was awesome, actually.
Or, it should have been awesome. The food was delicious, and they were all here sitting here together, and Dean had a couple more movies lined up. Cas had just said some weird thing about the latest Wizard of Oz book that had got Sam cracking up again. Cas wasn't doing too badly, really, and Sam actually looked really happy for once, and nobody had died in months now, and...
It ought to have felt great.
It ought to have felt like family.
And it did, actually. It does feel like family, thought Dean, it really does. Actually... it IS family. Abruptly he realized, sitting there in his chair, that this was exactly why it wasn't so great. For suddenly he was fighting down a sudden surge of panic. The thought If they're my family, they'll all die, came zinging unbidden into his mind, and Dean's mouth nearly went dry. He sat there, his hands tightening on his fork and knife as he looked at them both: Cas next to him explaining something about his pie crust, Sam standing up now cutting up the pies— and Dean felt completely certain that Sam and Cas were both going to die. Because that was what always happened. Always.
They'll be taken away, thought Dean. They'll die, like Kevin and Bobby, or they'll leave, like Charlie, or they'll forget me, like Lisa. Even Sam... I barely got him back. That was so damn friggin' close... and I'm not going to be able to save him like that again. I promised him I wouldn't. And Cas... I lost my MEMORY of him! And he nearly died, so many times, with the orb, and then in the lake, and now Cas is— Cas is ... Crowley still hasn't gotten in touch, and Cas is... probably going to... Cas is probably going to... By Christmas, will Cas be...
Dean could only cut off the thought by chugging a huge swig of his whiskey. Sam shot him a questioning look, but Dean looked away.
Well, at least they hadn't gone around the table and said thanks, or any of that crap. Or said grace.
In fact nobody had even mentioned the word "grace" in a few weeks.
Dean eventually managed to calm himself down, by the tried-and-true method of swigging his way rapidly through a few more glassfuls of booze and then launching on a long, irrelevant story, which in this case turned out to be Dean making an impassioned case about whether or not Han Solo or Greedo had shot first in the original Star Wars movie. This necessarily involved some elaborate tangents about Indiana Jones and also the Die Hard series and then a long speech about Spiderman, which Dean felt sure was also highly relevant to his Han Solo case. Sam started laughing, but Cas just sat there staring at Dean, slowly eating forkful after forkful of pie, looking increasingly puzzled but perfectly content.
About fifteen minutes later Dean was wrapping up with an emphatic, "So, you see, Han definitely shot first or the entire basis of his character collapses," when Cas interrupted him out of the blue with:
"If I don't get my grace back..."
Dean stopped in mid-sentence. He and Sam both looked at Cas.
Cas looked a little embarrassed. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt. I just wanted to say that today has been a very nice day." He put his fork down, and said, "Last year on this night, I was sleeping on a concrete floor and I was hungry, and uncomfortable, and I was alone and I only had enough money for a burrito. I knew it was a holiday— I knew it was Thanksgiving— though I didn't really understand what that was exactly, but I knew it was a day to feel thankful, and I was trying to feel thankful for a couple of things. For one, I'd found the floor to sleep on— it was dry at least, and it's just awful being out in the rain when you're also cold, so I was thankful about being somewhere dry. Then of course, there was the burrito too and I felt thankful about that also. So I concluded then that the point of the holiday is to be thankful if you've got a floor to sleep on, out of the rain and snow, and a burrito. But I kept thinking about the two of you." Cas glanced down at his plate. "I wondered what you were doing. I was hoping you were both okay. Hoping you had had a nice meal together."
Sam and Dean were both silent.
"And now I've realized," went on Cas, "the floor and burrito were nice, back then; and the pies and turkey are extremely nice, now; but that's actually not the point, is it? The real point is to be with family, isn't it?" Cas looked up at Dean, and looked over at Sam too. "The point is to be with family. To feed them food you made. To listen to their stories." Cas added with a half-smile at Dean, "Even if the stories don't make any sense. Have I got it right?"
After a moment, Sam nodded and said, "Pretty much, Cas. Yeah."
Dean found he had gone entirely mute.
"So, if I don't get my grace back," Cas said again. "If next year if I'm not here, I just wanted to say that —"
"Stop right there," said Dean abruptly. "Stop." They both turned and looked at him, and Dean said, "No goodbyes." And please don't remind me what a bastard I was to you, he thought. Last year... I could have done something. Sent you some money. Paid for a motel room. Given you a call. Something. Anything.
Cas was looking at him again, and Dean stared down into his glass.
"I was just going to say," said Cas, gently but insistently, "that no matter what happens next, today was a very good day." Dean still didn't say anything, and Cas finally said, "Dean?" He reached out and touched Dean on the shoulder. "Have I said something wrong?"
"Dean," Sam said, in a kind of a low growl.
"No... nothing wrong." Dean managed to say, "Just... Cas, I'm... " He swallowed. "I'm sorry you weren't here last year. I really am."
"But I'm here now," said Castiel. "That was my point. I'm glad I'm here now."
He gave Dean a smile. A gentle, relaxed smile.
With no bitterness... and no blame.
That was Castiel, wasn't it?
Dean felt the clenched feeling around his heart ease a little. But only a little.
The very next day, the Friday after Thanksgiving, Dean did something he thought he would never do in all his life. Something of earth-shattering importance. Something that left Sam absolutely stunned:
Dean told Castiel to take the Impala out by himself. Anywhere he wanted.
Cas was so startled by this offer that he couldn't even seem to figure out where to go. He spent a while standing at the Impala holding the key, just staring at the car, till Sam suggested that maybe Cas could go to Lebanon's tiny community library to return some of Cas's books (baking books, predictably; and an astonishing number of Oz books). And maybe pick up the next Oz book and a few new movies.
Dean made sure Cas had his cell phone, checked it himself to be sure it was charged, made Cas recite Dean's cell number from memory just in case, gave him some cash just in case, told him what to do if he got a flat tire, just in case, and made him recite the route to and from the library several times, just in case. (The library was all of two miles away, on a dead straight road.) Dean was just in the middle of describing what to do if a rainstorm suddenly came up and the wipers broke, just in case, when Cas said, "Dean. DEAN."
Dean stopped.
Cas said, "Dean, I've walked on the surface of the sun. I watched Pangaea break apart. I can drive an automobile two miles to a library."
"Uh," said Dean. "Okay. Um. But, call if anything comes up, okay?"
Sam was chuckling by now, but Cas just nodded and got in the Impala, started it up smoothly, and steered it perfectly out of the garage and away down the driveway. Still Dean just couldn't take his eyes off the Impala. He followed the car out of the garage, and stood outside watching Cas heading down the long driveway, somehow fearing that the Impala would suddenly veer right into a tree, or maybe spontaneously flip over and burst into flames.
But the Impala just rolled neatly away, in a perfectly straight line down the long rutted bunker driveway. Dean could still make out the shape of Cas's head in the front seat. Dean watched till the car made a smooth turn onto the main road and went out of sight.
"They grow up so fast, don't they," said Sam, beside him. "Next thing you know he'll be heading off to college."
"Ah, stuff it," said Dean, still watching the empty driveway.
"Empty-nest syndrome really can hit you hard, you know," went on Sam. "Maybe you need a hobby to take your mind off it? Maybe you could take up knitting."
Dean was opening his mouth to say "I'll stick that knitting where the sun don't shine, Sam" when he felt a hand on his shoulder, and it wasn't Sam's hand. He didn't even have a split second to move or shout or pull his gun or anything; instead there was a sudden, strangely queasy feeling like a rubber band pulling at his guts, and a sliding sensation across his skin as if he'd popped suddenly through a thin soap bubble, and abruptly the world went grey and misty. Dean had felt this before, and he knew immediately: It's an angel. An angel's flying me somewhere. And it's not Cas.
For a microsecond he still saw the bunker, and the trees, and the driveway, all looking as grey and filmy as if he were watching an old black-and-white movie. Then the grey, misty ground flew away from under him, hundreds of miles unspooling in a moment. Prairie rocketed past at blistering speed, hills appeared and flowed past in an instant, and then mountains went zooming past.
And suddenly they were back in the world of normal colors, and they were on a mountaintop. He and Sam. Side by side. Tied to a pair of trees.
Dean gasped for breath, still struggling to understand what had just happened. He heard Sam over to his left sputtering, "Dean— what— Dean— what the hell?"
There was a flicker of movement at the corner of Dean's eye, and he turned his head to see Crowley standing between the pair of trees. With a little old lady. A little old lady with her gray hair in a bun, and her reading-glasses propped up on her hair.
Ziphius, the angel who had chased and tortured and nearly killed Castiel, that terrible night in Nebraska. Ziphius, the angel who'd been assisting Calcariel with his plan to awaken the magma elemental underneath Yellowstone, to blow North America sky-high and "purify the Earth" of all life.
And now Dean suddenly remembered...
Ziphius and Calcariel had been working with demons.
They had been making deals with demons. Signing contracts that had lots of clauses. Crowley's specialty.
Crowley had said, I've got some associates...
... I've got some associates who can handle grace safely.
"Oh no," said Dean, his heart sinking.
"Oh yes," said Crowley, beaming. "And here I thought I was going to be introducing you all to each other! But as soon as I came to Ziphius with my proposal, imagine my surprise when he, or she — whatever, Ziphius, I can never keep my pronouns straight with you angels — imagine my surprise when she/he said you're all acquainted already! It sounds like you've already had quite the bonding experience together. Escaping from magma elementals at the last second! You must all feel like brothers in arms, I suppose? Or sisters. Whatever."
Ziphius seemed to be paying very little attention to Crowley's speech. The second he'd stopped talking she tilted her sweet grandmotherly face to the sky and spoke one word. One strange, long word, and a tremendous bolt of lightning split the sky with a thundering crack and shattered a nearby tree very close to Dean. The poor tree was nearly split in half, several great branches and half its trunk peeling away with an echoing crash. The remaining half of the tree began smoldering, little bursts of flame wisping up its bark.
"Holy shit," gasped Sam. Dean couldn't even speak; he was half deafened from the noise, his head ringing, his vision nearly whited out.
He had to blink a few times just to get his vision back, and then he saw Crowley backing away as Ziphius pulled something out of her pocket and held it up: a little vial of glass filled with a swirling bluish-white light. It was glowing with an eerie radiance. An angel's grace.
"I believe I have something that you want," said Ziphius. "And I believe you will negotiate with me."
"And I believe I'm done here," said Crowley, and he disappeared.
A/N - Ah, you knew it wasn't going easy, right? (mwa ha ha ha ha...)
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