Castiel shovels the last forkful of pancake into his mouth eagerly. Food took him a while to get the hang of when he first became mortal, but he's taken a liking to some mortal foods. Pancakes drowned in syrup happen to be among his favorites.
"I wasn't always a human." Castiel says it slowly; he doesn't want Dean to go shock. Tonight has been quite a night, even by Castiel's standards.
"Oh." Dean stares down at his own plate of eggs likes he suddenly finds them fascinating.
"I used to be an angel. I was a…supernatural foot soldier, of sorts. I had hundreds of brothers, Dean, and we all served together, serving our Father and taking care of the business.
"But sometime after Michael had Lucifer locked in Hell, it all went wrong. God… God isn't here anymore, Dean. He hasn't been for some time. I found that out the hard way. Do you know, Dean, that only five beings have seen God? Lucifer, Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Joshua. No one else has ever seen Him."
There is a broken quality to Castiel's voice, in his expression, as he stares down at the empty plate in front of him. "Now it's just a sad mockery. It's all a bureaucracy. And then… Then they kicked me out. They kicked me out because I told the truth. Dean, can you even imagine the power that I once held? I took out entire legions of demons with barely any effort. And then Michael told me that for revealing the truth to the others, I had to Fall. Said it was blasphemy.
"So he threw me out. Can you imagine what it was like, Dean, to be immortal, nothing but raw power, and then get reduced to nothing but flesh and bone? I get hungry, Dean. I get tired. I'm addicted to cigarettes. I'm an alcoholic. I'm…mortal. Human."
The look of disgust and contempt on Castiel's face is enough to make Dean feel a little wary. He tries to go for humor. "Welcome to the club."
Castiel laughs. "I used to be a member of a much better club, Dean. A powerful, influential club. See, when I die here, I will go straight to Hell. I've sinned and for that I must suffer."
"Oh."
"Of course, I'm not going to go to Hell."
Dean jerks his gaze up from his eggs. "How the hell are you gonna pull that off?"
"If I do enough good, I could regain entry to Heaven."
"So you're gonna buy your way into Heaven."
"Essentially."
Dean eats a forkful of eggs at last, not really hungry but wanting something to do with his hands. He swallows before he speaks—he does have some manners, after all. "So Hell—" he starts.
But then a lackluster ringtone rendition of 'Smoke on the Water' interrupted, Dean's cell phone ringing.
"Winchester. …Yeah. I'll be right there."
"Guard spotted him looking at a body, before he ran across the street. Came in here and had a go at the entire stock. He drowned himself in alcohol in under a minute." Jo doesn't bother with any insignificant details; she knows Dean's style. If he wants any extra information, he'll ask.
Castiel crosses the police line without hesitation, giving the cop that tries to stop him a look that makes even Dean wary.
"Hey, you can't be here!" Jo looks to Dean for back-up, but Dean just shrugs and nods his head.
"He's okay."
Castiel kneels beside Zachariah. The man had almost as many paranormal connections as Crowley, and he'd only been working for about fifty-something years. Sure, Zachariah was a dick, but he didn't deserve this.
That's when Castiel realizes something is carved into Zachariah's palm—it's not a random wound, there looks like a pattern…
Castiel pulls a handkerchief from his pocket and presses it to the corpse's palm for a moment before peeling it off.
It takes him a moment to recognize the symbol: it's a simple circle, arrows inside swirling into the middle.
And that is when Castiel realizes just how deep the shit he's in is.
Because this sigil, so innocent-looking, is only used for one thing: bringing Satan himself topside.
Yeah. Castiel is fucked.
"I need to see where Sam died."
Bela Talbot loves her job.
She's one of those blessed few who found something that they're not only good at, but enjoy, and managed to make a living out of it.
A very, very good living out of it—Bela enjoys the finer things in life, and she never settles for less than the very best.
Of course, Bela does keep herself grounded, and she is endlessly practical when it comes to her work. When you're a master thief, you have to find out how to balance your own wants with sensibility.
This little room in a bowling alley, behind the lanes, isn't glamorous or fantastic.
However, it's terribly practical, and Bela's actually rather fond of the cramped space. It holds everything she could need in terms of the paranormal, and it's not as if Bela needs a big apartment or office. She's rarely in one place for more than three days.
Bela sits down at the desk, rifling through the papers for her latest job—regaining a lost magic staff for some private-investigator wizard in Chicago.
The sharp tones of her phone ringing pull Bela out of the researching lull she's settled into.
"Yes? Oh. Yes… Yes… Got it. I hope you know I'm adding another zero to my paycheck, Castiel…"
The symbol sketched in the margin of her notebook is not familiar to Bela, not at first sight, but the book of occult symbols is sitting on the desk beside her.
The Chicago job can wait.
