A/N: Ouch, tough crowd, huh? I did mention that if you don't like it, review and tell me, didn't I? Ah well. Hopefully the appearance of your favourite boys will bring a few more of you into the light.
But anyway, moving on. I'm going to do warnings for this story on a chapter by chapter basis, simply because I have several directions this could take, covering Powerful!Sam, Wincest, Sam/OFC (yeah, like .5% on this one, but thought I'd mention it), death of pretty much everyone, language, torture, so, yeah… I will warn at the start, as I work out where it's going.
Warnings for this chapter: Language.
Disclaimer: I own nothing that you recognise.
-o-O-o-
"I'm just saying – Crowley has Kevin. And that sucks. But we have been looking for him for three weeks and we are no closer to finding him than we were on that blasted boat."
"What, and so we should just give up on him?" spat Dean at his brother. "You're good at that aren't you Sam?"
Sam flinched, but quickly covered it with anger. "This is not about that!" he yelled, then slumped and sat down on one of the cheap motel beds.
"Look," he said, as Dean sat down and apologised with a frown. "We can't get Kevin at the moment. But it was Kevin who hid the tablet, not the King of Hell. It's got to be easier to find and if he knows we have the tablet, he's going to have to come and get it – or at least send someone to. We can find out where he is keeping Kevin then."
Dean blinked. "That is actually a good idea."
Sam raised a wry eyebrow. "No need to sound so surprised. I do have them upon occasion."
"Bitch."
Sam was about to respond, when a woman appeared in between them.
"What the fuck?" exclaimed Dean, flinging himself backwards and rolling off the bed to get away from the woman who had appear right in front of him.
"Natalie, I'm guessing?" asked Sam, eyeing the woman distrustfully.
"Sam Winchester. I've heard a lot about you."
"If you even think about calling me 'the boy with the demon blood'…" warned Sam.
"Not at all," smiled Natalie. "You were destined to be evil, manipulated for it at every point in your life, and still you fought it. You killed Famine! You defeated Lucifer! And now you're the champion who is closing the gates of hell!"
"Jesus, Lady," said Dean. "You put any more exclamation marks in there and you could be Captain of the cheer squad for the eternally surprised."
For a moment, the angle seemed about to glare at Dean, but instead she smiled slightly.
"Ah, Dean, as charming as ever, I see."
"Enough," snapped Sam. "Why are you here? How did you find us?"
"Castiel's protection is still in full force, I promise you," she said. "You would no doubt feel it if I tried to remove it. I simply decided it would be a good idea to put a… tag on you. I needed to be able to find you."
"Well, remove it," snapped Dean.
"I will be more than happy to Dean, once I know I can trust you."
"Yeah, well, trust is a two way street and there is no way we will ever trust you after what you did to Cas."
"I thought I was helping him," the angel protested, earnestly. "After Purgatory… he was unstable. You know that."
"I know he was arguing with someone in the room with the tablet," said Dean. "And it sounded an awful lot like that person was telling him to kill me."
Natalie sighed. "The voices are back then. I had hoped that that was just a temporary thing."
"You still haven't told us what you want," said Sam and Natalie frowned at him disapprovingly.
"A soul has been removed from heaven," she said, eventually.
Dean and Sam stared at her for a moment.
"So?" asked Dean.
"Despite what you two may think, this isn't a common occurrence," she snapped. "We don't know why it happened, or how it happened or even who the soul belongs to. But it's not some idiot making a deal with a demon to get his recently dead brother back. The soul had been there for eight years – no demon would have made the deal."
"So you don't know what's going on, and you're panicking," said Sam. "And you want us to find this soul, so we can find out what's going on."
Natalie nodded.
"Well, give us one reason why we should help you, then."
"It is your duty, as enemies of hell," exclaimed Natalie, outraged.
"Our duty is our own," said Sam. "You don't get to dictate it to us."
"Remove the trace," said Dean. "Remove every way you have of tracking us and we'll look into it."
Sucking on a lemon was not an expression that Sam had associated with angels until then, but Natalie had it apparently perfected.
"Fine," she said. "We know that the soul was pulled to somewhere in the west of America. We can't help you more than that."
She gestured at the car keys lying on the side and they glowed, briefly, then vanished.
Dean stared. "Did that bitch put angel mojo on my car?!"
-o-O-o-
It took them about a week to get over to the Northern border – they had been hunting an honest to god swamp monster in Florida, while looking for leads on Kevin, and there was a way to go. After reasoning that they needed to do research before anything, as 'the north' wasn't exactly descriptive, Dean voted to go to Vegas first and replenish their funds.
"Dean, Vegas is not 'on the way' to the Northern states," said Sam, exasperatedly.
"It's north of Florida, isn't it?" asked Dean, with a grin.
"Yes, but so is Missouri, and that route didn't add an extra day to the trip."
"Live a little, Sam."
Sam rolled his eyes and went back to researching on his laptop. It was sort of a moot point by now, to be honest.
"You not going to join me, little brother? Together we could own this town."
Sam waved him away. "I'm going to take a look at weather patterns for the northern states. Anything this big would have taken a hell of a lot of juice. It might show up."
"Where did I go wrong with you, Sammy?" asked Dean, shaking his head and leaving the room, grinning at the irritated 'it's Sam' that floated out behind him.
-o-O-o-
He might have been a little drunk when he got back to the room, and he might have had lipstick stains on his collar, but he was $7000 dollars up, from starting with $200 and he was sure his little brother would forgive him. He still would try not to wake him up.
"Good night?" asked a voice as soon as he came through the door, and Dean winced.
"I thought you'd be asleep."
Sam shook his head. "I found something. I think we need to get moving first thing."
Dean mumbled something that could have been "Okay," or quite possibly "Sod off," but Sam just rolled his eyes and helped his brother lie down on the bed.
"Did you have a good night?" he asked again, his voice softer this time, genuinely interested.
"Seven grand, Sammy," smiled Dean. "Oh, and Carmel was amazing. The things she could do with her mouth, Sammy."
"Ok, bro, that's too much information," murmured Sam, pulling off his boots. "You get into a poker game?"
"Started all small stakes," said Dean, leaning forward slightly to let Sammy take off his jacket. "But that last game… I cleaned them out. You should have seen their faces, Sammy."
"Alright, Dean, we're definitely leaving in the morning."
"Carmel called herself my lucky charm."
"Maybe I should just let you sleep in the car," mused Sam, to images of an irate woman attacking his brother for leaving in the middle of the night, but Dean was already asleep. Sam smiled, softly, and turned to his own bed. It had been a long time since Dean had been drinking and not trying to drown his sorrows. He wouldn't begrudge him this one night.
Of course, that wouldn't stop him bitching at Dean tomorrow.
-o-O-o-
Joy sighed as she poured a cup of tea for her daughter. After the initial hysterical outburst after finding out that she had died and the world had carried on without her, she had fallen into a type of pensive melancholy. She was, Joy thought, trying to work out what to do with her life. Everything she had previously had, had died with her, but at least she now had a life to work out.
"Sweetheart?" Joy called, knocking on the bedroom door. "Would you like a cup of tea?"
The door opened at her touch and she saw her daughter curled up on her bed, a tablet resting in her lap. Technology had been one of the first things she had reacquainted herself with, exclaiming over smartphones and tablets and 3G with genuine excitement, one of the only times she had seemed happy since her return.
Perhaps she had simply forgotten to be sad.
"What are you reading, darling?" she asked, as she put the mug down onto the bedside table.
Her daughter didn't answer, but after she failed to object, Joy leaned over and glanced at the screen.
The website for the New York Times blinked back at her and she could see tabs for several other prominent newspapers along the top of the screen.
"Where are you up to?" she asked, after a moment.
"Last year," came the reply. "Mom, what happened?"
"What do you mean, sweetheart?"
"What do I mean? One minute everything is fine, and the next you have entire towns vanishing, mass delusions and half the country announcing that the end is nigh. And after that, it just gets worse! Hurricanes, tidal waves, earthquakes. Storms that never let up. And two years after that, the news just stops, or becomes so dumbed down you would think it had been written by a pre-schooler! Are you seriously telling me no-one noticed?"
Joy stopped. "I… I never thought about it like that," she said. "I guess I was too caught up in the individual events to notice the big picture. I guess everyone was."
"What happened?"
"I don't know. I'm sorry. One moment the world was going to hell and the next it stopped. I didn't even notice the change."
"How could you not notice?"
"Because believe it or not we don't all take an eight-year view of the news!" snapped Joy. "Don't bring this up around your father. You'll only upset him."
Her daughter sighed and nodded, then reached for her tea.
"You put honey in it," she said with a small smile.
"You didn't think I'd really forget how you liked it, did you?" asked Joy softly, pulling her daughter against her. "I missed you every single day, love, and refused to forget a single thing."
"I'm sorry about being such a bitch," she said, curling into Joy's warm shoulder as her voice cracked with tears again.
"Shhh, darling, it's okay," said Joy. "It will just take you a little time to catch up. You have as long as you need. We'll all still be here."
"I love you, Mom."
"I love you too, Jessy-bear. Now drink your tea."
-o-O-o-
"So what did you find?" asked Dean, as they slipped into a booth at a diner. He'd slept through most of the morning, after being woken up and practically carried to the car by his younger brother. He'd been too out of it to even complain about Sam's choice of music and Sam had enjoyed the, for once, peaceful journey.
Sam didn't answer right away, waiting instead until the waitress – a motherly blond who simply rolled her eyes at Dean's smile – had poured them both coffee and taken their order. After a lifetime on the road, they barely even had to look at the menu to know it by heart, and choosing was more a formality than anything else.
From his jacket pocket, Sam withdrew a map and spread it out over the table, weighting down the corners with the gently-steaming cups of coffee, much to Dean's displeasure.
"Storms," he explained succinctly, as Dean exchanged his coffee cup for a salt shaker and took a long, satisfied swallow of the bitter drink.
"Sammy, I hate to break it to you, but 'storms' isn't a lot to go on."
Sam rolled his eyes. "I'm not talking about a little bit of rain and a few rolls of thunder, here, Dean. I'm talking about huge electrical storms that come out of nowhere and cover entire mountain ranges."
"That's not that big, is it?" asked Dean, worriedly.
"Okay," said Sam. "Try the entire state of Montana."
Dean blinked.
"Along with parts of Idaho, Wyoming and Canada. We haven't seen storms this big since Azazel was around – and even then it was only when he was doing something big."
"Alright," said Dean. "I take your point. You think it's centred on Montana?"
"From the weather satellite I hacked into, yeah. I might be able to narrow it down a bit using local news sites, though."
Dean nodded as the waitress brought their food, then wrinkled his nose at Sam's salad.
"How can you eat that stuff?" he asked.
Sam eyed Dean's plate then raised an eyebrow. "An hour ago you made me pull over so you could throw up. Now you're eating a double cheese burger with bacon, fries and onion rings, and you're lecturing me about my eating habits?"
"I did not throw up," protested Dean.
"Oh, well, then we really ought to get you to a hospital. That amount of stomach pain normally means women's cramps. I wouldn't want to deprive the doctors of their very own case study."
"I hate you," muttered Dean.
"Have we worked out who, what or why, yet?" he asked, around a mouthful of fries.
"Oh, dude, that's disgusting," muttered Sam, looking away. "And no, not yet. I mean, obviously we can draw some conclusions."
"It's demons," said Dean, with certainty.
"It looks that way," said Sam, "Sure, there are other things that can raise the dead, but demons are associated with electrical storms. I'll ask Garth to keep an ear out for anything else it could be, but for the moment, it's our best guess. There have been no weird deaths or people going missing up there, but quite a few people whose dreams seem to be coming true."
"So a demon is making deals."
"It would explain how the soul got out of heaven, but no demon is going to use that much power to get one soul – I don't think any one demon has that much power any more. Not since we took out Lilth, Azazel, Abaddon and Alastair, anyway."
"We're looking at demon's working together, again?" asked Dean, with a wince.
"Well Crowley does have a history of employing minions. It's obvious that they at least have the capability."
"So someone down under is planning something big, then. Anything to do with us?"
"Could be," said Sam. "We are looking to close the gates of hell. I'd say that's enough motivation for them to work together."
"Or someone's pissed at Crowley and trying to take over Hell."
"He did kill Meg. And she was Azazel's daughter – I bet there were a lot of demon's who would have supported her. If nothing else, it's probably the only reason Crowley would have kept her hidden topside instead of where he was in complete control. But I don't see how a single soul from Heaven could help with that."
"For that matter, I don't see how a single soul from Heaven could stop us, either."
"It could be some powerful witch or psychic, but if they were in heaven…"
"Then they're probably not going to be all pally with demons," finished Dean, with a frown.
"And the soul was left on earth, not taken straight to hell."
"I guess we'll have to find out who it is before we can do anything, then," said Dean with a frown. "Have you finished your rabbit food, yet? I want to get moving. And I'm driving. I'm not listening to any of that crap you call music anymore."
-o-O-o-
A/N: Review and feed the hungry author! We wither up and die without attention. :(