The Man Who Knew Too Little

Ch 10 by Jokers

"This thing ain't no monster." Gabriel actually took Bobby's revelation rather well, the older Hunter thought. If it were Sam or Dean, there would be a lot of sputtering going on from the other end of the phone line.

Instead, all he got was a calm, measured, "What do you mean?"

"I mean that this isn't anythin' supernatural. It's a guy. A human guy. Who is still alive."

"What do you mean 'a human guy'? Humans can't do things like this to people. Even if we ignore the whole teleportation thing, which humans can't do, that still leaves us with the mystery of how exactly this guy could have…Hold on, Dean's flailing around again," Gabriel apparently removed the phone from his ear. It would certainly make sense, given how muffled his voice became. Bobby sighed and leaned back in his chair, pinching the bridge of his nose in a vain attempt to redirect the migraine which was rapidly forming, "Okay, I'm back back. Explanation time."

"Alright. Here's what I got. About four years ago there was this guy named Maximilian Curmudgeon-" Gabriel snickered, "Gabriel, this is serious."

"I know but," A snort, "Maximilian Curmudgeon?"

"Okay. I'll give you that one. But anyway. He was this big hotshot scientist, went to some University with some long-ass name that only makes sense if you read its entire history, got a doctorate in Neurology. He had a weird passion though."

"What's that?" Gabriel said it in a way that made Bobby think he probably had a pretty good guess.

"Fear."

"Thought so."

"Anyway, the guy was originally working for some pharmaceutical company. According to the records, he was tryin' to make a medicine that could suppress fears. The company was thinkin' they'd sell it to people with phobias. That wasn't exactly what Curmudgeon…stop laughing Gabriel. Gabriel? Did you put the phone down? It isn't that funny. That's better…anyway, the good Doctor had something a little different planned. He was making a medicine, but it wasn't to get rid of fears. It was to amplify 'em. Eventually the company noticed all the dead bodies piling up around his lab and fired him. The police started an inquiry on him, but he disappeared before it got anywhere…now, I'll give you three guesses as to where his old murder factory was."

"Give me an address." Bobby read off the street name, some random lot in the middle of nowhere. He barely had a chance to finish before the line went dead. No doubt the angel was off to save his big brother.

It looked like Gabriel and the Winchesters had more in common than either of them would ever admit. The idjits.

The Winchester boy wouldn't go away. It was bad enough that Lucifer was hallucinating, worse that he was starting to lose track of the fact that it was a hallucination, but he didn't think he could deal with Sam Winchester.

It wouldn't really be so bad, having the younger Winchester around, if not for the fact that he was pretending to be so normal. Lucifer had long gotten used to Adam's shouts of pain, what was one more voice joining the chorus? Sam wasn't screaming, though. Instead, he was being reasonable, kneeling in front of him and asking what was wrong and looking so sympathetic it made the Morningstar want to scream.

The fires of the Cage had receded again, which was the only reason he wasn't in too much pain to acknowledge Sam. He almost wished the flames would come up again. His newly found guilt was whispering to him, a sort of twisty, stabby pain that made it hard to move.

"This isn't real, Lucifer. Snap out of it. Come on, now isn't the time for this…" For some reason, this made sense, but Lucifer just couldn't think why. Every time he got to the edge of understanding just why he couldn't be in the Cage, it slipped away and he was back to sheer panic.

Another man was in the room. Lucifer didn't recognize him. He wasn't sure if that was a good thing (no memories for the ache in his chest to feed off of) or a bad thing (since when had strangers ever done anything good for him?), but then decided it didn't matter. He looked shady.

The flames flared back up, and Lucifer couldn't see anymore.

Sam almost swore when Lucifer started to shake again. In the hour or so Sam had been locked in the warehouse with the angel and the scientist, Lucifer had continuously shifted in and out of his own little world. One moment he would seem almost (not quite) lucid, and then the next he wouldn't even be looking at Sam, instead begging for forgiveness from the empty air in front of him. The man in the lab coat giggled.

"Only two minutes! The lucid periods are getting shorter so very quickly. I don't think anyone has progressed quite this fast..." There were very few people that Sam thought he could kill in cold blood. The scientist wasn't quite one of them yet, but since he had learned about the extenuating circumstances surrounding the archangels' attempts at mass genocide, there was at least one spot open on the list.

The man had stood in the doorway for around thirty minutes, wearing a smile that would have done the Cheshire Cat proud. Occasionally he would comment on something, managing to make every time he opened his (obscenely large) mouth even more irritating than the last.

The scientist looked like he was about to say something else, but then something distracted him. He turned around, swore, and then turned back, giving Sam a smirk that made the Hunter's skin crawl. The man then pressed a button on what Sam had previously thought was a watch and, very abruptly, disappeared.

Sam only had a minute or so to wonder what had just happened before Gabriel burst through the door, looking like he wanted to tear something into little tiny pieces with his bare hands. In less than a second, though, that anger had been replaced by concern and the archangel was kneeling at his older brother's side.

"Hey Lucy. Wake up, we're going now." Lucifer's answer was less a coherent string of words and more a strangled sob. He leaned back away from the Trickster, whimpering softly. Gabriel sighed, then pulled the struggling Morningstar into a hug.

"Shh, Lucy. Whatever you think is happening right now, it isn't real." Lucifer stiffened for a moment, then he suddenly wrapped his arms in a vice-grip around his brother's waist.

"You came, Gabe. You came. I knew you would come, but Michael said you were going to leave me here and I was starting to believe him and I'm so sorry." Lucifer continued mumbling apologies, but a combination of tears and burying his face in Gabriel's shirt muffled the words. Gabriel stood up, pulling his older brother with him, and turned to Sam.

"Let's get out of here, Sammy boy. As much as I want to tear out the throat of the bastard who did this, I'm not at all interested in waiting for him to come back." Gabriel let go of Lucifer with one hand, offering it to Sam who, having no complaints against that, took the offered hand. The three men teleported out of the room.

"Dean." Sam leaned over his older brother, hoping that he could snap his brother out of his hallucinations by proving that he was not, indeed, dead.

It had taken a short while, but Sam had managed to procure a relatively cheap hotel room, and Gabriel had teleported their respective older brothers onto the beds.

Gabriel had to admit that Lucifer was at least doing better than Dean. That wasn't saying much, but it at least meant that the Morningstar had acknowledged that Gabriel was actually there, even if he refused to believe that he wasn't in Hell. Dean didn't even seem to be hearing Sam.

Luckily for all of them, Gabriel was still in possession of both his angel powers and his sanity. The archangel stood in between the two beds and placed a hand on the foreheads of their occupants. He focused.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then, both Lucifer and Dean took a simultaneous deep breath, their previously shut eyes shooting open.

"Fuck!" Dean shouted, sitting up. Gabriel smiled.

"Now now, Dean-o, there'll be time for that later." The Hunter made a very rude gesture in Gabriel's direction. The Trickster smirked. It appeared Dean had recovered from his little panic attack rather quickly.

Lucifer seemed to be fairly relieved as well, but in the "yes it's finally over I'm going to start crying now" sort of way instead of the "well that was fun, now let's do something else" sort of way that Dean was. Gabriel cursed himself for not focusing on figuring out how to deal with other people's emotional problems. Instead, he had learned how to, what? Stick a guy's hand in warm water? Put a bucket of tar over the door? Those skills certainly weren't helping at the moment, as they just sort of left him to stand there awkwardly while his older brother had a mental breakdown. He had no idea what to do.

"Come on. Deal with your brother." Sam had snuck up behind him (using his stealth, which he had more of than any giant gorilla like him should) and pushed him in the direction of Lucifer's bed. Gabriel sighed.

"Hey Luce, you alright?" Of course he isn't alright, you dumbass.

Lucifer looked up at Gabriel and smiled. Then, he reached forward and grabbed Gabriel's arm, pulling him into a hug. This one was far less desperate, less frantic, than the one in the scientist's (Gabriel couldn't refer to him as Curmudgeon, this situation was far too serious) lab.

"It wasn't real. I was so worried, so worried. At first I knew it wasn't real, but then it got too hard. But it wasn't real, and you saved me. Thank you Gabe, thank you so much." Gabriel didn't have anything to say to that, so he just sat on Lucifer's bed and adjusted his positioning so that the older angel's arms weren't awkwardly around his waist.

"So…do you guys know what happened?" Sam asked, after several seconds of silence.

"I'm not sure. There was this vial that I found at the first crime scene, and when I put it in my pocket the liquid in it turned to…I dunno…gas. The vial broke, and I breathed in, and then…for some reason I was just sure that Sammy was dead, and Bobby was dead, everyone was dead and it was my fault. I just couldn't think…" Dean frowned, like he was almost more upset by the fact that someone had messed with his head than over his experience.

"Well that explains why I wasn't affected." Gabriel said.

"And why's that?" Gabriel scoffed at Sam.

"Why on Earth would I breathe? I'm an angel, I don't breath unless I feel like it. And if this is a gas that fucks with your brain, then that would be enough to stop it from affecting me…I think the better question, Luce, is why you were breathing." Gabriel couldn't see his brother's face, but he just knew the angel was pouting.

"I do what I want, Gabriel." Gabriel grinned, letting go of his brother.

"So what now? I figure we've only got a couple of options right now. We can chase after this bastard and maybe catch him, we can go back and destroy his stash of fear juice, then leave…or we could just leave. I mean, just leaving a hunt in the middle's not my style, so if anyone proposes that I'll probably veto that, but I figured I should just put that out there." Dean said.

"Oh? And who gave you veto power?" Gabriel asked, grinning.

"It comes with being awesome."

"So what you're saying is you don't have veto power." Dean flipped Gabriel off.

"As much as I'd like to just chase that worm down, we should figure out what exactly he's got up his sleeves first. I'm not really looking forward to a repeat of today." Lucifer said.

"I'm with Lucifer. Going after him right now is risky…and besides, this hunt seems kind of…involved. We're a little of occupied with that whole God business." Sam said.

"So. Burn the lab, then go back to Bobby's and tell him to make someone else deal with this freak? I'm good with that."

Twenty minutes later, Gabriel and Lucifer carefully held their breaths as Maximilian Curmudgeon's lab went up in flames.

"Hey Bobby, we're back. We thought that…Holy fuck, is that Crowley?" Dean stopped short as soon as he caught sight of the Crossroads demon who was lying unconscious on the couch, a look of bewilderment on his face.

Bobby sighed. He had tried to call both the Winchesters and tell them about the latest development in the Crowley Department, but neither of them had answered. Instead, he was stuck with the absolutely wonderful task of explaining the demon's presence in person. Sam seemed content to let Bobby explain, but Dean just wouldn't shut up.

"Why is he even here? And why isn't he dead? If there's a reason he isn't dead, why isn't he in a Devil's Trap?"

"Why is he unconscious?" Sam asked. Bobby sighed.

"Slow down, idjits. Let me explain." The Winchesters both looked incredibly hesitant to back off. Lucifer looked surprised at Crowley's presence. Gabriel looked bored.

"Turns out that the Crowley we've known and hated for the past year or so wasn't the real Crowley."

"What does that mean?"

"You know how God possessed Cas while he was in his vessel? Turns out that ain't the first time he's possessed something that was possessing something else." Sam frowned. Dean exploded.

"So you're saying that that Unholy Motherfucker was the one who tricked Cas into opening Purgatory? I'm going to kill that-"

"Yes, Dean. That's exactly what it means. It also means that we've been playing His game for this past year."

"So Crowley's here because…? I mean, I'm guessing he isn't possessed anymore, but I wouldn't want Crowley lying in my house under any circumstances. Especially not without something binding him."

"Frankly, I don't think he's going anywhere."

"And what makes you say that?" Lucifer asked.

"Well, he's got this gaping hole in his stomach for one."

"Impossible! Demons aren't affected by stab wounds like that. He should be either fine or dead."

"That's what he was saying too. Before he fainted, that is. And…it's not just that." Bobby paused, gathering his thoughts.

"What?" Sam asked.

"Well. When I was moving him, there was this bottle of Holy Water on the table, and it got knocked over. The stuff spilled all over him. Only…it didn't burn him at all."

"Fuck." Bobby couldn't agree more with Dean.

"I did some other tests on him while he was unconscious. All of them turned up negative. I'm not quite sure how but…I think Crowley might be a human."

A/N: bonus points to anybody that catches the Thor reference.