AN: A little shorter this time, my apologies. The next chapter is a doozy, though, so this is just kind of the in-between filler.

I'd also like to add. . .no, I don't think this is how the Apocalypse will actually happen. Though it would be kind of neat. See if you can figure out how the parallel stories tie in to one another: I'll give a cookie to anyone who gets it right! Most of our main characters have shown up by now. . .trying to figure out how I can get Bobby and Ellen in. . .they're pretty much my favorites, but they are just stubbornly trapped in their respective junkyard/bar. Grrr. . .

Poor Sam and Dean. . .they're so angsty. Luckily they've got Jess to be a halfway normal person!!!! (:

Reviews are always loved and appreciated. Thanks you to those of you who have reviewed to this point. It really does mean a lot!

Jess wasn't stupid. Though that was her friends' new favorite word for her. Stupid. Stupid for hanging around Stanford after graduation, waiting for Sam to come back. Stupid for staying with him when he was on the road more often that not, probably screwing girls across the country. Stupid for calling him every night, whether he answered or not. Stupid for lighting up when he came home. And, no doubt, stupid for driving three hundred miles just because he'd sounded scared.

But she knew things, somehow, things that nobody else knew. Like she knew, knew, she had died. She could remember it. Flames. She'd died in a fire. She knew, and the fact that she was still alive and whole didn't change that.

She knew that Sam and his brother were doing something big, something important. She knew that when she saw him, and he was bruised, and limping, bleeding and dirty, that it wasn't because he'd become a homeless degenerate, or gotten into a fight. She knew it was something bigger.

She was pretty certain that he was hunting the thing that killed her.

So Jess knew she wasn't stupid. Which was why, when she saw the little girl, standing at the side of the road, one finger sticking out, and she felt like she should stop, she did. It's stupid to pick up hitchhikers. That's what anyone would say. Stupid. She did it anyway.

"Thank you," the girl said, sitting in the front seat. She didn't look like a hitchhiker, Jess thought critically. Not dressed in that plain, almost Amish dress. Not without any luggage, not even a backpack. Blue eyes met hers.

"My name is Cassidy," the girl said.

"I'm Jess."

"We are going to the same place," Cassidy said confidently. Jess smiled, pretty sure that the strange little hitchhiker had no idea where she was going.

"Where's that?"

"To find the Winchesters."

That should have done something to Jess, should have set off alarm bells. But somehow it felt. . .right, like puzzle pieces fitting together. Like the gun that she'd found under Sam's bed that second night he'd left, the one she'd kept with her. Like the small salt shaker she kept in her right pocket, or the vial of holy oil she wore around her neck.

"This feels right, doesn't it?" Cassidy said. Jess smiled.

* * * * *

"This isn't right," Castiel said desperately. Sam couldn't agree more. The only thing that felt right in the whole messed up situation was the angels admitting that he had free will. Which he fully intended to use. While the angels had been monologuing at one another (the most popular pastime for villains, as Dean had remarked on numerous occasions), he'd snuck up on them. He still had the knife, even if Dean had dropped the gun.

Seeing his father standing in front of them had been a shock, no doubt about it. But they'd seen stranger things, and the creature certainly hadn't acted like a father. Hadn't acted like a Savior, either, which is what had decided Sam. He was just acting like another angel dick.

He lunged forward, plunged the knife into Michael's chest. Because he was closer, and because he was threatening Dean. Stepped back. But Michael only grinned in amusement, and pulled the knife out.

"You can't kill them with the knife," Castiel said. "Or the Colt. You humans can't kill us at all."

Sam nodded. That's what he'd thought, what he'd assumed, but he'd still had to try.

"Dean," he said, choking the word out. His brother turned to look at him, lost. He was going to say yes. Sam could see it. Not because he lacked free will – the angels had lied about that, Sam was certain. There was no way that his brother – his big brother who had done everything, sacrificed everything, given everything, didn't have free will. There was no way.

He was going to say yes because he was giving up. And Sam couldn't blame him.

Sam had started hunting when he was twelve years old. Dean had started at four.

Sam had quit for four years, headed to Stanford. Dean had stayed.

Sam had spent four months without his brother, in hell. Dean had spent forty years.

Sam had been fighting demons for a total of nine years. Dean had been fighting for sixty.

Anybody would say yes at that point. Any sane person would say yes, when the world was ending, and God, dressed in his father's meat suit, stood in front of him and said that hewere nothing. When an angel was crying on his shoulder, and his own brother had betrayed and hurt him worse than anything else. But Sam knew, knew that saying yes would destroy his brother more certainly than Hell.

He'd let Dean down his entire life. He'd allowed Dean to martyr and sacrifice himself. Now it was his turn.

He reached down, grabbed the knife, and plunged it into his own chest.

* * * * *

Most of the time, the plan went to hell. Dean was fully aware of this, and it was half of the reason that he hadn't bothered filling in their plans to confront Lucifer. Something always happened to mess it up, to throw a cog out of place. Bu there was always some way to keep fighting. There was always one more punch to be thrown, one more witty rejoinder to throw out in the face of whatever baddy he and Sam were facing.

He'd lost a lot, in his years in Hell. He'd lost what little confidence he'd ever had in himself. He'd lost his belief in redemption. He'd lost the steady determination that was Dean Winchester. But then a blue-eyed angel had reached down and pulled him out, and he'd discovered, hell, maybe everything hadn't been lost. It had just been misplaced.

And he'd been thrown into the biggest battle of his life. And sure, there had been some nasty bumps along the way. He and Sam had been torn apart, thrown back together, ripped to shreds and stuck in place with duct tape and glue. But they'd kept fighting. They'd never given up. And no matter how many times they'd been told that it was impossible, they'd never given up.

He had a GED and give'em hell attitude, and he was going to keep fighting.

They were an ex-blood junkie, a high school drop-out with six dollars to his name, and Mr. Comatose, but they were going to keep fighting.

And now, being held in this prison of silks and satins he was being told that he had no free will. His father, or at least his father's body, was staring at him, telling him that he had no choice.

Well, fuck that. The Apocalypse was supposed to be explosions and fighting and guns blazing. He and Sam were supposed to go out, Butch Cassidy and Sundance. And sure, they were going to die, but they sure as hell weren't going to give up in some pretty-boy angel mansion.

"This isn't right," Castiel choked out, and Dean tightened his grip on the angel. Of the three of them, he was pretty sure that Cas was the weakest. Between losing the angel mojo and finding out that his Heavenly Father was more of a Heavenly Douche, he sure couldn't be breathing too easily at the moment.

An abrupt movement caught his eye, as Sam lunged at Michael, knife clenched in his fish. Oh, Sam, Dean would have sighed, if he'd had the time. The knife was meant to kill demons, not angels. They both knew it wouldn't work. They both had to know it wouldn't work.

Bright red blossomed on the blouse of the beautiful woman that Michael currently inhabited. It disappeared as quickly as it had come, but Dean noted that her hair had turned a shade whiter, her eyes a tad bit more opaque. She was losing Michael, or he was losing her, whichever way it worked.

Sam turned to look at him, at that moment, and Dean knew that he had to say something. Because Sam looked fucking haunted, and was saying his name. Only it was funny. . .because Michael was staring at him in the strangest way, and Cas was beginning to hitch a bit beneath his hand. So he was kind of busy, trying to think, trying to figure a way out of this twisted situation.

He was still staring, still confused, when his brother wretched the knife back out of Michael's vessel, and . . .and. . .

"No. . ." the word came out broken, not strong, as Dean watched his brother stab that same knife into his own chest.