A/N: Chapter revamped 2017-09-12

The last couple of hours had been a whirlwind. One minute Sam and Dean were sitting in a little Internet cafe searching for signs of Malphas on the Internet. The next they were rushing to the hospital with the woman they thought they had lost for good, and by the looks of her they might not have been wrong. Jenna, still unconscious, had been quickly triaged and then rushed to the ER and seen by a doctor. After what had felt like forever the doctors had done everything they currently could for her and she had been moved to a room in the Intensive Care Unit where she could be closely monitored throughout the night, if she made it that long.

There was an army of machines connected to Jenna, monitoring all of her vital functions. The heart rate monitor beeped a steady beep, her pulse visualized on the monitor. Another monitor displayed her blood oxygen saturation and body temperature. It was a constant whirring and beeping and buzzing as Sam and Dean sat there and waited. The head trauma she had suffered was severe, and the doctors weren't sure if she would survive until morning, let alone wake from the coma she had fallen into.

While his younger brother sat stoically at Jenna's bedside, hands folded in his lap, Dean paced from one side of the hospital room to the other. If he wasn't rubbing the back of his neck he was glancing anxiously at the clock and the doorway. What's taking Cas so long? he kept asking himself over and over again. While they had drove to the hospital, Sam had called the angel on his cell phone. Something must be wrong, he should have been there by now, shouldn't he have?

Finally, the angel's familiar figure stepped into the doorway. As he stood there and surveyed the room, his bright blue eyes fell upon the woman laying in the bed and his expression turned from serious to grim.

"What took you so long?" Dean lashed out, taking a step towards the angel. It wasn't Castiel that he was angry at so much as he was angry at himself. This woman, they'd taken her on as their responsibility and they had lost her to Crowley. Now she was laying in a coma in a hospital bed in Lebanon. The guilt was devouring him. If only they had gotten to her sooner, if only they had found Crowley and-, and what exactly. He didn't know, but they should have done something.

Sam stood up to greet Cas and smiled apologetically. "What my brother meant to say, is that we're glad you're here," he said.

Castiel frowned still standing in the doorway. "Your wards hid your exact location. It's a big hospital, I got lost," he explained. "The nice lady at the reception desk helped me find my way."

"Yeah, well, we can't be too careful," Dean mumbled as he clasped his friend on the shoulder and led him into the small hospital room. "Malphas wants Jenna for himself, and Heaven wants her dead."

Castiel walked over to the side of Jenna's bed. Since he'd arrived his eyes hadn't left her. "So that's her: The Thing That Should Not Be," he observed. Dean understood what he meant. Cas had told them the prophecy, and the woman looked anything but the part, especially hooked up to all of those machines and IV tubes.

The movement was so subtle Dean almost missed it. If it hadn't been for the light that had glinted off the smooth silver surface of the angel blade, he may not have even caught it at all. "Cas, No!" he shouted as he jumped between the angel and Jenna. Castiel hesitated, blade held still in his hand as if someone had pressed the pause button. "What the hell?" Dean growled. "We asked you here to help her, not kill her."

"That thing," Castiel said, looking at Jenna with disgust then turning to Dean, "is an abomination. It should not be. My mission-"

"Screw your mission," Dean snapped, cutting across the angel. His chiseled features twisted and contorted in anger and disappointment and frustration. "That woman right there, she's a human being, and she hasn't done anything wrong. We are not killing her." There was a finality to his tone that was lost on the angel.

"Dean, we've discussed this," Castiel argued calmly. "She's a monster."

Dean gritted his teeth swore under his breath. "Cas, you're our best friend. You're family. Doesn't that count for anything?" he pleaded. "Please just trust me on this. We can't kill her for something she might do." As Castiel considered Dean's words, his brows pulled in and his lips pressed together in a slight line.

Sam stepped up next to Dean. Together they formed a wall between the angel and the woman laying helpless on the hospital bed. "Cas, please," he begged. "My brother's right."

With a heavy sigh, Castiel stowed his blade. "I hope we don't end up regretting this," he told them. Sam and Dean stepped aside, allowing the angel to approach Jenna's bedside. As Castiel passed, Sam mouthed a silent thank you to him.

Cocking his head to the side, Castiel observed Jenna for what felt like forever. His face constricted in concentration as though he was struggling to see something the rest of them could not make out. "Usually I can see every damaged cell," Castiel complained, "but with her it is different."

"What does that mean?" Dean asked anxiously.

"I'm not sure," Castiel admitted. Then he laid his hand over Jenna's body, closed his eyes and concentrated. Sam and Dean waited with baited breath as they watched the angel. Dean's eyes kept darting expectantly to the woman's face and to the machines connected to her looking for some sign that whatever Castiel was doing was working. After what felt like forever, the angel removed his hand and let it fall to his side. "I can not help her," he stated.

Dean's heart dropped into his stomach like a stone. "You're an angel of the Lord, what do you mean you can't help her?" he demanded. "You've fixed me up plenty of times."

"This is different," Castiel explained, shaking his head and taking a step away from the hospital bed. "What she is, it isn't part of the blueprint. I'm sorry Dean, there's nothing I can do."

Sam exhaled sharply then chewed the inside of his mouth before dropping once more into the chair at her bedside. Dean ran a worried hand through his hair and turned away, walking toward the window on the far side of the room. All that was left to do was wait. Either the woman would live, or she wouldn't, and there was nothing any of them could do.

The attack on Crowley's safe house had caught him off-guard, and that bothered him greatly. One thing he prided himself on was always being ten steps ahead of the enemy. Brains over brawn. Yet he had not been prepared for the betrayal of one of his most trusted demon underlings. It was something that would not happen again. First of all, he would not forget that demons could not be trusted. Second of all, he would send a clear message to any that might think to follow in AJ's unfortunate footsteps: it would not be tolerated, it would not be worth it, and those that crossed him would be dealt with ruthlessly.

And he would start with the demon who betrayed him. After Malphas had retreated and the Winchesters had taken care of Jenna, Crowley had channeled all his anger and rage at finding the demon who had sold his safe house out to the enemy. It hadn't taken long to track down the traitorous AJ, and now he had him locked away inside his lab at his base of operations in the long abandoned Needham Asylum near Fall River, Massachusetts. There was no better place to extract the information he required and to begin to exact his revenge.

In the center of the run-down room was AJ, strapped helplessly to a chair that had once been used to secure patients in the insane asylum while doctors performed lobotomies and other questionable procedures intended to cure them or at least make them more docile. The demon was nothing more than a pathetic, blubbering mess. Crowley had been gleefully carving him up for hours.

Here in his lab, Crowley was different. The expensive, perfectly tailored suit had been traded in for faded jeans and a white t-shirt, the tie for a heavy-duty rubber apron. His brown hair was messy and tousled, and his features more relaxed. Gone was the salesman, the business man. Here he was someone else.

Whistling a cheerful tune, Crowley picked up and examined several instruments before settling on a surgical scalpel. "Please. I told you everything. I gave you what you wanted," AJ begged. They all begged. It didn't matter if they were demon or angel, monster or human. Under the torturers knife, they were all the same.

"Yes, you did," Crowley replied with a smile, as he turned the scalpel over in his hand, letting the light glisten off its smooth surface.

"You said if I gave you names, you would stop." AJ's voice became frantic as he struggled in a futile attempt to wriggle free from his bonds. It was a trick Crowley had picked up from the Winchesters during his time locked inside the Men of Letters' dungeon. The straps he used were inscribed with a devil's trap, preventing the demon from leaving his vessel.

"Did I now?" Crowley replied, raising an eyebrow and nodding thoughtfully. "Hmm. I guess I lied." With that, Crowley bent over his subject once more, and dragged the scalpel across his flayed flesh. Slowly, painfully, he began to peel the skin from AJ's chest in wide strips, and oh how AJ screamed! After what the demon had done to him it was like music to his ears. Crowley was the conductor and with each stroke of the blade he was creating a beautiful symphony of agony.

"Please," AJ whimpered when Crowley took a pause to mull over a new instrument with which to torture him. "Please stop. No more."

Crowley settled on a sledge-hammer. The feel of AJ's bones being crushed to dust would be immensely satisfying. Placing the hammer down on the ground next to AJ with a thud that made the demon jump, Crowley leaned down. "I'm afraid, this isn't going to stop. Not ever," he breathed into his ear. "You should have thought about what would happen before you decided to cross the King of Hell. Once your meat suit can take no more and is destroyed beyond repair I will send you back to Hell where you will spend the rest of eternity on the racks." AJ whimpered again. The last time he had been on the rack Alistair had been in charge of his torture, and Alistair was a master of his craft.

Crowley was true to his word and by the time that he was finished with AJ, any demons loyal to Malphas had fled his court and gone into hiding. They knew their time had come. But it didn't matter. They could run, they could hide, but eventually Crowley would find them. There was no demon that could not be bought or tortured into giving up whatever information they had. Not at his hand. Not with the utter rage and determination that fueled his hunt.

So one by one Crowley began to track them down. Each demon he questioned gave him a little more: a tidbit of new information regarding Malphas' plans, a new name for his list of traitors, the location of a safe house where a Malphas loyalist was hiding out. One by one, Crowley rooted out the enemy and butchered them. It was a purge, unlike Hell had ever seen.

The hospital room was empty and quiet when Jenna awoke from her coma. The only noise was the whirring and beeping of the machines connected to her, monitoring her life signs. There was a long moment of confusion while she tried to work out what was going on and where she was. It was all so confusing. The last thing she remembered was being in Crowley's safe house. Malphas was going to kill Crowley, and without thinking she had bounded across the room and grabbed a hold of the energy he was channeling. For that moment she had seen it so clearly, the way that energy connected all of creation. It had been overwhelming and magnificant, and she had wondered if that wasn't what it must feel like to be God. Then, everything had gone black.

Now she was... she was in a hospital. What had happened, she wondered as she sat up in her hospital bed. As she looked around the empty room and gathered her bearings she suddenly became hyper aware of the IV dripping into her vein and the electrodes taped to her skin. In her hyper aware state they were unreasonably uncomfortable, as if they were invading her skin, and she began to rip them out with feverish intensity.

As the heart rate monitor was disconnected it let out a constant, annoying tone and a nurse came rushing in. She was a short and homely looking woman, with dirty blond hair and dimpled cheeks. "You're awake!" The nurse gasped. Her lips parted and she let out the breath she had been holding.

Jenna rubbed at the spot on her arm where the IV had been. There was nothing more than a little red dot where it had pierced her pale skin. "How long have I been asleep?" she asked.

The nurse was still staring at her in shock, as if she hadn't expected that she would ever wake up. "Eight days," she told her.

Eight days. Jenna's mind went into a tailspin. If she had been here eight days where was Crowley? What had happened to him? Was he dead? Did Malphas win? What would happen to her soul now? As the panic and uncertainty reared its ugly head, her body began to tremble. "Was there anyone else brought in with me?" she asked. The nurse shook her head. Jenna nodded, but her mouth twitched as she tried to hold back a sob. "What about any visitors?" she asked, the desperation clawing its way into her voice.

The nurse offered Jenna a sympathetic smile, the corners of her blue eyes creasing ever so slightly. "A few," she replied as she turned off the monitors and silenced the noise that had all but faded into the background as a million questions had flooded Jenna's mind.

Jenna leaned forward, staring at the nurse intently. "Who?" she asked. The nurse described two men, who could only have been Sam and Dean Winchester. But it didn't make sense. How could they have found her? There was a hesitation, and when she spoke again her voice trembled and cracked. Part of her needed to know, but the other part was scared of what the answer might be. "Was there anyone else?"

The nursed paused and thought back over the last eight days. "Yes. There was another man," she recalled. "Though he only came the once." There was a flutter in her stomach and Jenna's heart skipped a beat. Cautiously she licked her lips and stared questioningly at the nurse, waiting for her to go on. "He was a serious looking fellow, never smiled and always seemed to be concentrating very hard. He had short brown hair and wore a tan trench coat."

Jenna's stomach dropped and her heart physically hurt. "Oh," she replied dejectedly. She let out a heavy sigh and lowered her head breaking eye contact with the nurse. For a moment she had let herself believe that it could have been Crowley, but the man the nurse described was not familiar to her. Though she knew she shouldn't care, she began to cry anyways.

"Is there someone I can call for you?" the nurse asked.

"I uh…" Jenna reached up and wiped away her tears with the back of her wrist as she wracked her brain. She didn't have a phone number for the Winchesters or for Crowley, if he was even still alive. There was only one number she could think of. "My parents, I guess. You could call my parents."

It had been nearly a year since the last time Jenna had seen her parents. Her 'illness' had been hard on them, both financially and emotionally. They always worried, and it was so hard for her to see them suffering like that because of her, so she tended to keep her distance. One thing she knew though, they were her parents and she could always count on them to be there if she needed them. And right now, Jenna really needed someone.