Title: Dead, Not Gone
Author: Jmaria
Rating: FR-15
Disclaimer: Joss owns the BtVS girls, Kripke owns SPN guy. (Burton owns the rest of them.)
Summary: Castiel's a busy little angel, what with pulling Dean out of Hell, and others out of heaven.
A/N: Resurrected 'verse. Which is just insane and in my brain…eating it
A/N2: I think I should just put my head through the wall. How the hell did I add another fandom to this already stuffed universe? Damn Katie Brown towels! I had to fold them and my mind wandered to fic - again. It's a wonder that the people I work with don't look at me funny when I start muttering about fandom nonsense. (Of course, we talk movies/tv shows/and other random things all the time, so it's kind of normal)

Dead, Not Gone
Sick of All This Waiting Around

Anya - well, she was between. Being a human-turned-demon-turned-human-turned-demon-turned-human, no one was quite sure where she belonged. Apparently, there was just a whole lot of paperwork involved. Which is how she found herself at Juno's office, watching in rapt fascination as the cigarette smoke bellowed out of the gaping hole in her throat.

"Did you not read your haunting manual?" Juno asked distractedly.

"I'm not a ghost," Anya frowned. "And the only place I could potentially haunt, per se, was the Magic Box. Which is in a great big sink hole in California."

"Ah, the Slayer-clause," Juno nodded, looking up at her again.

"Demon," Anya corrected. "I was never a Slayer."

"No, the Slayer-clause," Juno took a drag on her cigarette as she thumbed through a file. "The higher-ups have been dog-earring a lot of the caseloads lately. A super-genius hacker, a seer and a hunter in the US, another super-genius hacker, a doctor, a secretary and a young boy in Wales, and you. An ex-vengeance demon."

"Higher-ups?"

"Angels," Juno shrugged. "I'm not quite sure what he wants you all for, but he wants you breathing for it."

"Then why isn't it called the Angel-Clause instead of the Slayer-Clause? Isn't that improper labeling?" Anya thought back to all the crazy labeling and filing Giles used to do at the Magic Box before he gave the business to her. It used to drive her crazy, just as this seemed to be annoying her.

"They are essential to the Slayers missions," a deep and serious voice said from behind Anya.

She turned to face a dark haired man in a tan trench coat who stood in the doorway. Juno huffed out a plume of smoke from her throat and shook her head at him.

"Always a flare for the dramatic, Castiel," Juno shook her head.

"I'm not being dramatic, false idol," Castiel turned his cold stare onto the spirit behind the desk.

"I didn't make them worship me, angel," Juno narrowed her eyes. "My corporeal form was destroyed and that's why I got sent here. Don't rub salt in an old wound, Castiel. It's bad form."

"You were a god?" Anya turned back to the caseworker.

"No, but they thought I was one," Juno shrugged. "Just as I'm sure thousands of girls thought you were a god for granting their wishes of vengeance."

"Yes, I suppose so," Anya shrugged.

"The abomination is to be rewarded for her selfless acts," Castiel cut in. "She is to provide balance to the shift."

"He's so very charming isn't he?" Juno snorted. "Millennia have passed, and he still hasn't formed a proper personality."

"He's not in touch with his humanity," Anya defended the angel, remembering how she'd grown out of her own humanity over the centuries. The barbs the Scoobies had occasionally thrown at her still stung a bit. "It takes a while."

"Honey, he's a heavenly being. They don't have humanity," another male voice chuckled from behind the angel.

"Mr. B," Anya smiled fondly at the trickster. His connection with the sandworms of the underworld had come in handy on a few of her more creative cases in the past.

"I liked it better when your head was shrunk," Juno rolled her eyes.

"Aw, Juno-baby, you ain't got no h-h-heart," Betelgeuse stuttered like the Cowardly Lion and clutched a hand to his breast before whipping out a gory and still beating heart before him. With a suggestive quirk of his brows he leered, "Want one? Left ventricle's the best bit."

"I always heard it was the right one," Anya scrunched up her nose. "It's just like you to be offering up inferior product."

"Annie, baby, where's the flayed skin and ridges?" Betelgeuse did a double take at the dead woman. "Weren't you a brunette?"

"Weren't you?" Anya snorted. "I lost my power source and became human."

"Yeah, but big bad D said you got promoted again."

"She did, until she undid a wish," Juno pulled another drag from her cigarette.

"Ah, wondered what happened to Halfrek," Betelgeuse nodded. "Uptight little Daddy's girl -"

"That abomination is not to be spoken of," Castiel narrowed his eyes.

"Why does he look shifty?" Anya frowned.

"He's an angel, angels ain't shifty," came the reply from Juno.

"You don't remember Gabriel?" Betelgeuse smirked. "Shifty little -"

"You've seen Gabriel?" Castiel turned to him.

"You haven't?" Betelgeuse frowned. "Damn little imp's been trying to sweet talk all the supernatural ladies. Had to shoo him off Lydia."

"Lydia who?" Anya's head turned at that. "Surely not little Lydia, the former child bride of yours?"

"How'd you uh, hear about her?" Betelgeuse shifted nervously.

"Halfrek mentioned she'd had to almost grant a wish to her once," Anya's eyes narrowed. "Because of a certain blue-skinned being. Even if it did technically fall into my jurisdiction at that point. I think that's why she passed on it, come to think of it."

"Lydia's got a clause," Juno chuckled. "The Maitlands made sure of it, didn't they, Mr. B?"

"Why is there a stuffy angel in the room?" Betelgeuse turned to face Castiel.

"Anyanka is needed. The underground king is rising, as are the spectors, Betelgeuse," Castiel said flatly. Juno and Anya winced at the use of Mr. B's name. Names had power, and his more than most. Using his name gave him a license to move freely above his prison and into the mortal realm, after all.

"Angel have a heavenly power that strips the power of my name," Betelgeuse narrowed his eyes at Castiel.

"It's not time yet for you to go above yet. But Anyanka is needed to protect the Seer Cassie Newton."

"To late to do that," Anya shook her head. "She died in Sunnydale of heart failure."

"You're not the only being brought back," Castiel answered with slight lift of his shoulders.