THE ROAD SO FAR
It's called "the rising of the witnesses." It figures into an ancient prophecy."
Dean gave Bobby a look and then looked at the Bible in his hands, "Wait, what book is this prophecy from?"
"Well, the widely distributed version's just for tourists, you know. But long story short - Revelations. This is a sign, boys." He set the Bible down on the table and Shekinah bit her lip. She should have guessed this was coming; with the angels being so frantic upstairs and all the chaos downstairs.
"A sign of what" Sam and Dean asked simultaneously and then looked at each other for a split second, daring each other not to laugh at their coincident.
"The apocalypse." replied Shekinah gravely.
Dean stared at the angel in front of him and almost laughed. "The apocalypse? Like apocalypse, apocalypse?" She stared back and he wiped his mouth with his palm. "The four horsemen, pestilence, plague, and 5-dollar-a-gallon-gas apocalypse."
Shekinah blinked at him. He had lost her in the midst of his trying to understand the situation, but luckily Bobby, being used to Dean's phrasing, replied, "That's the one."
He sat down at his desk, took off his hat and smoothed the thinning hair down before putting the hat back on. "The rise of the witnesses is…well, it's a mile marker." He explained.
Thoughts whirred in Shekinah's mind at thousands of miles a second. The apocalypse meant that Lucifer would be trying to get out of hell. And soon. The thought made her stomach drop and her palms began to sweat. She glanced over at Sam and that he was deep in thought.
"Great. Any ideas aside from staying in this room until Judgment Day?" Dean asked, leaning on one of the towers of books lying on the desk. Bobby shot him a look and yanked a piece of paper out of the book in the middle of the stack, causing Dean to falter. Once the crumpled paper was smoothed and placed on the desk, Bobby pointed to it.
"It's a spell that will send the witnesses back to rest." Sam's head shot up so fast Shekinah thought that it might snap off and catapult through the ceiling. That'd be something horrible wouldn't it? She shivered and tried to focus on the topic at hand.
"Will it work?" She asked and Bobby glared at her, pretty confident in his findings. He had been right about what the spirits were, so she should have given him more credit.
"It should." He replied and stood up to gather ingredients. "-And if I translated it correctly, I have everything I need in the house."
"Any way, everything we need is in this room?" Dean asked. That would make his life so much easier, but it was never that easy was it? Bobby made a little noise in the back of his throat that resembled a laugh, and offered up a cynical smile. "So, you thought our luck was gonna start now all of a sudden?" The question was rhetorical of course; nothing about the Winchesters was 'lucky', Shekinah started to notice. "Spell's got to be cast over an open fire."
"The fireplace in the library." Sam realized and held back a groan. Nothing about leaving the safety of the panic room was appealing, but he wasn't about to complain about doing his job. Dean wasn't nearly as quiet about his misgivings once Bobby confirmed.
Dean placed his hands in his pockets and gave a fake laugh to try and ease the mood, "That's not nearly as appealing as a ghost-proof panic room, you know?" Bobby and Sam ignored him and prepared to leave the room by loading and checking weapons. Dean inhaled and took the silence as his answer with a nod. Geez, tough crowd.
Shekinah watched as the guns were cleaned and loaded with rock salt. It was almost therapeutic watching Sam work so swiftly. His fingers brushed the gun softly and clicked the rounds in abruptly. It was like clockwork; so routine, so natural. The way he pulled the guns apart and put them back together made it look like second nature, but Shekinah thought. Isn't it?
And in that moment, the angel remembered the reason for his desensitized nature around weapons. The fault was to be placed on no one but herself, and she felt sick.
"You watch him a lot." Bobby stated, without taking his eyes off of the gun in his hand. He sat in his chair by the table that Shekinah had placed herself without a thought. Her eyes lingered on Sam, wishing to watch him work in peace until the ends of time. The way his face scrunched up when he couldn't dislodge a component of the gun with as much ease as the last, his eyes burning with concentration and thought. She wondered what he saw with his eyes; did the world change through his view? She was brought out of her own thoughts by Bobby once more.
"Listen here," He snapped his fingers, finally gaining her attention—as well as the attention of Dean, who quickly went back to work. "You may be an angel of the Lord, but you so much as touch a hair on either of those boy's heads and...I'll step in."
Shekinah felt a sense of offense build in her chest and her tongue ran against the backs of her teeth as she thought about his words. Her reply came from behind clenched teeth and flaring nostrils. "Is that a threat?" She had hoped that she was intimidating, that maybe he'd back down and apologize, but he did what she was least expecting and paid her no attention.
"If you want, you can consider it one."
She sunk down further onto the table and backed down at the unsettling reply. What kind of angel was she if she was abashed by a simple human's retort? Her eyes moved from Bobby back to their usual resting place on Sam, trying to gain back some of the self-respect and dignity she lost by her discomfort.
The trek upstairs was a quick one with each Winchester armed to the teeth and Bobby with his arms carrying the necessary books. Shekinah followed the trio up the stairs and watched as they poured huge amount of salt on the floor in a circle around themselves. Dean fumbled around trying to get the fire started.
Bobby started gathering things. "Upstairs—the linen closet. There's a red hex bag, should be heavy." Sam nodded and headed up the second set of stairs, but not before the two girls from earlier appeared.
"Bobby." One little girl said. Dean got up quickly, wiped his hands on his jeans, and grabbed his gun. Shots rang throughout the house and Bobby looked down at the paper.
"Okay, Kitchen. Cutlery drawer. It's got a false bottom. Hemlock, opium, wormwood." He rattled off and Dean cracked a curious smile.
"Opium?" he asked, images of Bobby with the pipe and opium lamp swam in Dean's head, all creating a rather interesting scene.
"Go!" Bobby shouted, startling Dean into jumping out of the salt circle and into the kitchen. The girls appeared and Shekinah stepped in front of Bobby, who was drawing something in chalk on the table.
"You walked right by us while that monster ate us all up." One girl stated. Her tone was laced with guilt-inducing truth.
"You could have saved us." The second added, only rubbing salt in the wound. Bobby glanced up from his work at Shekinah.
"If you're going to be here, be useful." He said and Shekinah was shocked into action. She placed her hands on each of the heads of the girls. Both girls let out bone-chilling shrieks of what could only be terror.
"What are you doing to them?!" Bobby asked, trying to continue his work without covering his ears. Shouldn't the girls have just disappeared? Shekinah looked back at Bobby with a scared expression.
"I don't know what I'm doing! I've never done this before." She admitted. The sound that came from the entities scared her. They were only children; horrified children. Shekinah peeled her hands away from the girls and they disappeared with a fwoosh of cold air.
Meanwhile upstairs, Sam had heard the screams, but he had to get that hex bag for Bobby. He steeled himself, ready for anything to come at him. He reached the closet and grabbed the red bag with no problem.
"You know what really pisses me off, Sam?" A feminine voice asked. Sam whipped around and shot in the general direction of the voice, but missed. The woman reappeared in front of him.
"You saw how I suffered for months. I thought you must have learned something. I thought I died for something." She continued.
"Meg." Sam's heart jumped into his throat and his fingers felt numb. She wasn't the Meg that was possessed by the demon. She looked more innocent in a way. Her hair was longer and darker than before, and her eyes were softer, yet they were empty.
"But what you're doing with that demon, Ruby... How many innocent bodies has Ruby burned through for kicks? How many girls just like me? And you don't send her back to Hell? You're a monster!" The words stung like an annoying sunburn. Sam raised his rifle and shot at her.
The clatter of cutlery falling against the tile was louder than Dean expected as he threw the drawer's contents around the room. He hummed some song he had heard on the radio to himself as he reached around to find the false bottom, but stopped when the kitchen doors slammed abruptly. A curse slipped out from between his lips.
"Dean?!" Bobby called from the other room.
"Don't worry, Bobby. Keep working." He called back. Henriksen popped up beside Dean.
"Victor." Dean said, staring at the man before him. They had only just got along when Lilith killed them all in an explosion. The memory made Dean look anywhere but Henriksen.
"Dean." He replied.
"I know." Dean started, trying to get a conversation started instead of a fight, if that was possible.
"No you don't."
Meg dispersed and Sam ran down the stairs, throwing the hex bag on the table. "Where's Dean?" He asked and Bobby pointed towards the kitchen. Muffled noise came from the other side of the door and Sam began trying to break it down.
"Tell me how it's fair. You get saved from Hell; I die." Henriksen reached inside of Dean's chest and gripped his heart. The pulse quickened and Dean felt his body go rigid. "Why do you deserve another chance, Dean?" The grip hardened and his breath hitched in his throat. Dean's eyes locked onto Henriksen's. They were black with hatred. This was not the friend he had made.
Suddenly the door burst down and Sam fired a shot right at Henriksen, dropping Dean onto the floor in a gasping heap.
"You okay?" Sam asked, grabbing his brother and pulling him up onto his feet.
"No." Came the reply, but despite it Sam still pulled him to Bobby.
Shekinah helped Bobby prepare the spell and helped keep the fire burning hot as the boys got the ingredients. Dean and Sam ran into the room and dropped the items on the table, then reloaded their guns.
Bobby started chanting in Latin and the window flew open, letting a gush of wind into the room. The wind blew the salt into disarray, leaving the company vulnerable to attack. An onslaught of the previous ghosts appeared. Dean and Sam shot each of the ghosts as quick as they came, but Shekinah stood there, not knowing what to do.
"Do something!" Dean yells and throws her a gun from the other side of the room. She stares down at the gun in her hands and took a deep breath.
"I've never fought before!" she shouted back.
"Are you kidding me? You took me down pretty easy for someone who has never fought." Dean grunted as he shot Meg.
"That was instinctive!" She replied and she fumbled with the gun until she pressed the trigger and shot one of the ghost in the foot. It disappeared and she beamed. "Hey, I got one!"
Dean was busy fighting Henriksen off with an iron fire poker and Sam was shoved up against a wall by a dresser. Shekinah ran to his aid, but even she couldn't move it. Bobby continued to recite the spell.
"Samuel, I'm going to get you out of here, I promise." Shekinah felt her vessel's heartbeat quickened with the sense of panic that rarely set in on angels. Flashes of her broken promise crossed her mind. Her eyes started to water and she felt like she was hyperventilating. Her body grew numb.
"Shekinah, cover Bobby-," Sam started but when he caught her eyes he couldn't continue. In that moment she didn't even look sane. Her hair was frizzed on the ends, she was breathing hard in concentration, and with a deranged look on her face she looked like she belonged in a mental institution.
"Dean," Bobby threw the bowl, "The fireplace!" Dean caught the bowl and quickly threw it into the fireplace. The fire grew around the bowl and turned blue immediately. It would have been beautiful, entrancing even, had anyone been watching.
Bobby fell to the floor and Dean ran to help him. The dresser released its hold and with all the force Shekinah was shoving with, it flew right through the wall and landed outside with a loud thud. Sam raised his eyebrows and Bobby shoved Dean off of him, telling him that he was alright.
The room went quiet and Shekinah fell to her knees, taking in deep breaths. Never before had her senses been so strong; it was like everything went into hyper drive when Sam was in danger. Saliva fell from her lips as she inhaled fresh air.
"Now, look what you did!" Bobby pulled a face as he stared out the now gaping hole in his wall. You could see the entirety of the Singer Salvage Yard. Shekinah felt strong arms pulling her up from underneath her own. She looked up and Sam was standing over her.
"Are you okay?"
"I…" She started, closed her mouth, and then saw the hole in the wall. "I'll fix that."
Oh my gosh guys, I'm so sorry for the uber late update and ugh it's so bad at that. I apologize. I haven't really been much unto writing recently, but luckily, we FINALLY FINISHED THE FREAKING EPISODE! Jeez that took way too long. Please forgive me for what is probably the most horrible, choppy chapter I have ever written.
Please review and tell me what I should fix or just tell me what you like or don't like. Honestly criticism is fabulous. Just try to take it easy, I'm a crybaby.