a/n: 8x19's total and complete butchery of demon and reaper canon threw me a bit, but I'm gonna ignore all of it. 8x19, like parts of 8x17, is dead to me.

Here we are back in our "only up through 8x14" universe, dear readers. Enjoy!


Chapter 3: It's the Life

What with all my expectations long abandoned
And my solitary nature notwithstanding,
You're the one who pulled me out of that crash landing,
My stunning mystery companion.
-Jackson Browne, "My Stunning Mystery Companion"

Meg didn't look up when Cas ducked into her room. She had a stack of books at her elbow and one propped on her chest. Desdemona was curled up next to her shoulder and appeared to be following along as Meg read. Occasionally she would touch the page with her paw, and Meg would bat her away.

Cas cleared his throat and tucked his hands in his trench coat pockets. Meg lifted a brow but kept reading. "Can I help you, Clarence?" she said.

"How are you feeling?" he said, hoping to stall a few moments.

"I'm fine. Busy, actually, so maybe you should get on with it. What ridiculously perilous situation do the Winchesters want me to put myself in now?"

He stepped closer to the bed, and Desdemona gave up on the book and sashayed toward him with a curious little mew of greeting. He scratched behind her ears and she purred. Meg rolled her eyes. "You and that cat. Why don't I just move out and leave you two alone?"

He blinked. "I'm sorry?"

She dropped the book and sighed. "Never mind. Since I guess you're not gonna spit it out, I will. They want me to go to Hell, don't they?"

His mouth twisted and he shuffled his feet. "Ah, Meg—"

"Don't bother," she said with a quelling gesture. "I knew it'd come down to that. Little Sammy Winchester's gonna need a psychopomp, and who else is qualified? You? Hardly. You'd have half a legion on your feathery ass before you got your big toe in the door."

His eyes roamed the small room. Finally he picked Desdemona up and sat down on the edge of the bed, his back to Meg. She watched the tense set of his shoulders, the stiff cant of his head, and despite the soft words he whispered to the cat, she knew how upset he was.

She caught her lip between her teeth. How had it come to this? An angel and a demon, bound together in a way that was never meant to be. Now he was asking her to possibly sacrifice herself for the people he loved, and what's more…she was going to do it. She was going to take Sam Winchester into Hell, and there was a very real chance she might not come back.

"I'm sorry," he said without turning. "I wish we knew some other way. I wish I didn't have to ask. It's too much. If Crowley—"

"I've told you before, feathers: let me worry about Crowley."

"I wish you would tell me what he did, Meg. I would like to know so that I can help you."

"I don't know how you knowing would help anything."

He hesitated. His chin tilted toward her. "Perhaps it would help me."

She opened her mouth. Closed it again. Her silence lasted so long he was sure she wouldn't answer, but at last she said, "Think of something, Clarence. The worst thing. The most painful. The bloodiest. The most humiliating. The fastest. The slowest. The sloppiest. The most precise."

He swallowed. "Yes…?"

He hadn't felt or heard her move, but when she spoke again her voice was very close to his ear. "He did them all. Then, when he'd done them once, he started over. But don't worry about Crowley, sugar. There's one lesson he still hasn't learned."

"What's that?" he said, nearly choking on the words.

"The best torturers don't get their hands dirty," she murmured, her breath warm against his neck.

His head pivoted, and she smiled, wicked and sharp. "You are a resilient and dangerous creature, Meg," he said.

"Don't you forget it, hot wings. That's the mistake they all make."

He let Desdemona hop to the ground and turned so that he was more or less facing her. "Do you remember the day we met?"

Her mouth quirked. "You mean the day you threw me in holy fire? Yeah, it sorta sticks out."

He acknowledged that with a brief flick of his brows. "I've always remembered the way you spoke of Lucifer. Your love and devotion to him. You called him father."

Her eyes clouded and she shifted away from him. "I…he created our race. Lilith was the first, and I'm a direct descendent of Lilith through Azazel. You know that."

"That isn't what I'm talking about."

She looked away. Her expression was, for once, shuttered to him, and he wondered if she were angry with him for bringing it up. "He was my cause for a long time. Maybe Crowley was right and he really was going to kill all the demons once he took over, but…I don't know. When he looked at me, I felt…I felt sort of…whole. Not different from what I am, but that what I am is perfect, just as it is. Anger and hate and fire and thorns, and he loved me. Not despite it or even because of it, but just because it was me."

She shrugged a restless shoulder, and when she finally looked at him, her eyes were stormy and uncertain. "Is that what you wanted to know?"

He wasn't sure what he'd wanted to know. "I wish you could have had your Heaven, Meg," he finally said.

"I do too, sometimes. But then what would've happened to you?" She wrapped an arm around his chest and dragged him up the bed. "No room for angels in Lucifer's Heaven, especially not pissed off rebellious angels fighting for Team Free Will."

"Hum," he said. He kicked off his shoes and stretched out next to her. Buried his face in her hair and took a long breath.

She curled her fingers into his shirt and let her body relax against his. The familiar warmth of his Grace—banked now, but always there—soothed her, like a hot fire on a cold day. Her wound stirred and muttered and went quiet, and she closed her eyes in relief. "Why Lucifer?" she said, her lips warm against his neck as she spoke. "Why now? You've never asked before."

He shifted against her and let out a quiet sigh. "The way you spoke earlier about the cage. It sounded as if you'd given it a great deal of thought."

There was a long silence. He could feel the tension in her small body, and her thorns pricked and burned. He weathered the storm and waited her out with an angel's patience. "When you saw him in the hospital, was it really him? Or just a hallucination?"

It seemed, for the moment, apropos of nothing, but he knew she was going somewhere. "I don't know. It's odd that Sam and I would have the same hallucination, but perhaps since I took his madness from him…" He trailed off thoughtfully. "It was a very interactive hallucination, if that's all it was."

She pushed away. "What if it was really him, Cas?" she said, her eyes somehow both bright and dark at the same time.

He looked down at her and cupped her face in his big hand. "Meg—"

"No! Think about it! I'm not saying I want Lucifer back. I'm just asking you—what if it were really him? It would mean he'd found a crack in the cage. A leak. Maybe you left the door open a teensy bit when you yanked Sam out, and he—"

"I did not leave the door open!"

"Don't get testy with me, feathers. You were obviously in a hurry, since you managed to leave his oh-so-precious soul behind. Is it possible you overlooked something else, too?"

His face went through a series of transformations, and it finally settled on…she wasn't entirely sure. His eyes were huge and impossibly blue, and lines creased his forehead. "No. You said it yourself, Meg. The cage is buried too deep."

"I said that to Sam, genius. There's no way a living human could get down there. But could an archangel get out? Fuck yes. Especially if he had some sort of link, like an open phone line between there and here."

"Sam's soul."

"Bingo."

He shook his head, slow jerks of disbelief. "When I took Sam's madness, the connection was severed. Neither of us see Lucifer any longer."

"Great. You hung up. Doesn't mean the weakness isn't still there, either within you or within Sam. What do you think taking him back to Hell will do to him, Cas? And I know you've seen the…that whatever it is. That thing."

His face fell into grave lines. "Yes. It wasn't there before the first trial."

She bit down on her lip and chewed. "I'll take him. I'll help him find his innocent soul. My question is what if he comes back with more than just one sweet, wrongly damned little soul?"

"Meg, what you're suggesting is impossible. Lucifer can't break out of the cage. It isn't possible."

"Hhmm," she said, a low hum of doubt. "I always thought the seals couldn't get broken. Where would we find a righteous man in Hell? Looks like I was wrong." She waved a hand. "Besides, both you and Death got in. That was after it was supposedly sealed for all ever and eternity."

He untangled himself from her and sat up. Ran both hands back through his hair and left it standing on end. "You wouldn't relish Lucifer's return?"

She went still. "Once I would've said yeah, absolutely. Now?" She sat up next to him and cast him a glance from the corner of her eye. "Maybe I don't want the world remade in someone else's image," she said, quietly.

"This point is perhaps moot anyway. If we manage to close the Gates—"

"I'll be sucked inside with the rest of the riffraff, so I won't have to worry about remaking the world. Right?"

He scowled. "That is not what I meant."

"I know," she whispered. "It's just easier to joke about it."

He turned to her, and his eyes were a blaze of righteous fury. "We'll think of something, Meg. I promise you."

Her smile was impossibly sad, beautiful and mournful and brimming with regret. "It's okay, Clarence," she said. She touched his face with light fingers, a gentle prick of thorns. "Whatever happens, it's okay."

He ground his teeth together and grasped her hand in his before she could pull it back. His grip was tight enough to bruise, and she felt her bones creak. "It will not be okay with me if you get trapped in Hell, Meg. Do you understand? It will not be okay, and I will not let it happen."

"Oh, hot wings," she drawled, "I just love it when you get all commanding."

He jerked her arm hard enough to make her cry out, a mingled yelp of pleasure, surprise, and pain, and the glint in his eyes was feral. "This isn't a joke."

Her mouth curved as she moved into him. "Who's joking, baby? Now come on. Aren't you tired of talking?"

He sat smoldering for another few moments, his expression hard and forbidding. Then, just when she thought he might flit away and leave her there alone and aching (he'd done it before, but it had been a long time, way back in the early days when he'd still been so ashamed of everything), he released her hand and grabbed a fistful of hair instead. Yanked her head back and melded his mouth to hers.

"It's a promise, Meg," he muttered against her lips in a gravel-and-cream voice that made her shiver.

"I hear you, Castiel. Now shut up. Right now your mouth has better things to do than talk."


Dean had all but forced Kevin into a room at gunpoint, ordering him to get some rest. There wasn't anything they could do until Meg either agreed to help them or not, so they might as well get some sleep while the gettin' was good. He protested, saying he still didn't know about the third trial, but Dean waved him off and finally he gave in.

"That kid. If he's not careful he won't make it that far," Dean said as he collected their empty beer bottles.

"Yeah, I know. What do we do about it?"

He shrugged and tossed the bottles in a trashcan. "I don't know, man. He just needs to deal with it. I know it's a lot—the whole prophet thing, bein' on the run, the isolation—but it's the life."

"We were raised in the life, Dean. It's different for us. Kevin was a normal kid before all of this. He had plans. A future. Now everything he's ever known is ripped apart, and the world's gone crazy. You can't blame him for having issues," Sam said with a little grimace.

"I don't blame him, I just—look, we've all got shit to bear. We've all got struggles. By the time I was his age, I was a full-blown Hunter, and Dad never let me forget it. You were halfway out the door, and it was all on me. I had to keep it all together." He threw a bottle so hard it shattered, and Sam stared at him through eyes darkened with empathy.

"Are you mad at Kevin…or jealous of him?"

"Jealous?" Dean snorted and dropped the trashcan. "Why the fuck would I be jealous?"

Sam shrugged. Held out his hands. "I don't know, Dean. You never got a chance to freak out. It was all just par for the course for us, wasn't it? Monsters and killing and hunting. You never got to be a normal kid, so Kevin's freak out is sort of…enviable. You wish you could have been in his position when you were his age. New to the life."

"I think that explosion musta rattled your gourd harder than we thought, because that's the craziest fuckin' thing I've ever heard."

Sam's mouth quirked and he turned back to his computer. "Okay. Whatever you say."

Dean squinted at the back of his brother's head and tried to think of something to say. Maybe Sammy had a point, but hell if he were going to acknowledge it. He snorted and dropped into a chair. "You think she's gonna help us?" he said, tilting his head toward Meg's closed door.

Sam glanced over his shoulder. "They've been in there a while. I think if the answer were no he'd be out by now."

"Yeah," Dean said as he idly paged through one of the books Meg had left on the table, "that's true." He glared down at the book and poked it.

"That book do somethin' to you?" Sam said.

"Huh? Oh." He slammed the cover and shoved it away. "Nah. I was just thinkin'."

"Uh huh." Sam shut the lid of his laptop. Dean had that tone, and it usually meant he wasn't going to get any work done until they talked through whatever was on Dean's mind. It could take a while for him to spill. "Thinkin' about what? Books written in obscure Latin dialects?"

"Fuck yeah," Dean said. "I'm deep, man."

Sam lifted his brows and fixed him with a patient, probing stare. Dean shifted. Cleared his throat. He looked down at the table and traced a pattern on its surface with his thumbnail.

"Dean."

He threw back his head and huffed out a breath. "You sure about this, Sammy? Really sure? Just you and Meg, down in the Pit?"

"I thought you were gonna give Meg a chance."

He held up a hand. "This isn't about her. I don't think she's gonna betray you down there; she's got just as much to lose if she gets caught as you do. This is about you. You're my brother, man. I already had to…" He trailed off and lowered his chin. Coughed a little and scrubbed his stubbled jaw. "I already had to watch you jump into Hell once. Now you're askin' me to do it again."

Sam's brow creased. "It's different this time, Dean. When I dragged Lucifer and Michael into the cage, it was a suicide mission. I knew what I was doing, and I accepted it. This time I'm coming home. I'm not gonna let you down."

When he looked up, Dean's eyes were bright and his expression incredulous. "This isn't about letting me down, Sammy. I'm not Dad."

"Yeah, I know. I know that. That's not what I meant. I just know you think I let you down when I didn't look for you—"

"Stop. We've been over that. You had a chance to get out, and you took it. I did the exact same thing when you were in the cage."

"That was different and we both know it," Sam said in a low voice.

Dean shook his head and let out an exasperated sigh. "Are you beatin' yourself up over this, Sam?"

He gave a restless shrug. "I don't know. Maybe. Should I be?"

"No!" Dean barked. "Just…forget it. You did what you had to do. I made it out."

"Yeah," Sam said, "you did. Just like I'm gonna make it out of Hell."

"Sam, listen to me. If it comes down to you or her, you leave her. Hear me? Don't risk yourself for Meg."

Sam licked his lips and studied his brother down the length of the table. "I'm not sure that's gonna be an option for me, Dean."

"Why? Because she possessed you once? Sam, do you have any idea how fuckin' weird that is?"

He rolled his eyes. "Yeah, Dean, I do. Look, I'm not an idiot, but it's not that simple. Benny is a vampire, right? But he saved your life in Purgatory, and he helped get you out, so you lied to me to keep him safe. If the situation were reversed, and you were goin' down there, and Benny were your guide, what if I said the same thing to you?"

"Fuck that, Sam," Dean said with a heated glare. "That's completely different."

"Not completely. Meg's helped us before. She took care of Cas. I'm not saying I'd die for her down there, but I'm also not gonna just leave her behind. She deserves better than that."

Dean looked away, lips white with tension and shoulders stiff. "I don't know what she deserves," he said, roughly.

"Same thing we all do, Dean. She deserves a chance. If she says yes, I'm gonna have her back down there. Because you know what?" His mouth quirked in a what the fuck? smile. "I know she's gonna have mine. Not like you would, no, but still. She'll make sure I get home in one piece, even if it means throwing herself to a pack of demons."

Dean let out a low noise, almost like a growl, and sat back in his chair. "Okay, then, you let her. Don't be a hero down there. Get the soul and get out. You've still got another trial after this one, and if this is only round two.…"

"Yeah, I know. What's round three gonna be like?"

A silence fell, hard and deep and echoing. Dean had only ever wanted to protect his little brother, but Sam'd taken on these trials and now he had to see them through till the end. It didn't make him happy, but what else could he do? It was hard to have faith in anyone, and Sam had flaked out on him in the past—to put it mildly—but there came a time when you just had to man up and fucking trust someone. It was basically the same advice he tried to give Kevin, and maybe it was time he took his own counsel.

He was about to say that to Sam (or something close to it) when Meg's door opened and the demon strolled out, arms crossed over her chest and mouth curved in a cocky little smirk. "Well, Sammy, looks like we need to get our walkin' shoes on. We're goin' to Hell, buckaroo."


I still haven't decided who they're gonna rescue. I don't think it'll be Bobby, because it doesn't make me happy that Crowley had any sort of control over that. Doesn't make much sense to me.

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