I swear these two have lives of their own that they're not telling me about. The number of times that I moved cut scenes from this fic for Gabe and Hecate is almost enough for me to write them another fic based on them alone. Will probably have to do that once this is done. It's a good job I completely adore Gabriel and don't mind Hecate otherwise I'd be in trouble. Not the easiest of chapters to write, this one, and AU of an AU.
As for the deleted scenes... I didn't want to up the rating on this fic at all, let alone just yet, so they'll stay under wraps unless you all ask very, very, nicely.
It's a Terrible Life.
Gabriel and Hecate are arguing, they have been since she killed Uriel two weeks ago. For an archangel who left because he did not want to have the blood of his brethren on his hands Gabriel is beginning to think that he is ordering rather a lot of them to be killed these days. The fact that it is only a matter of time before Castiel is forced to reveal the nature of his disguise is only another reason why Gabriel is on edge.
Over the last two weeks he and Hecate have spent time both apart and together, meeting up when one becomes concerned about the other and seeks them out to make sure that they are safe. This time he got spooked, felt the presence of Zachariah in a town near to Hecate's location and whisked both of them to one of his safe houses in Alaska. A safe house which is currently in lock down so that no one else can get in, but no one can get out either unless he wants it.
This is an old log cabin, untouched by the modern world unless one were to count the comfortable furniture he has used, a perpetual fire burning in it's grates and candles lighting every dark corner. He supposes that were it not for the circumstances it could be quite romantic, and it is a thought that he will one day have to entertain properly, but for the moment it is not and he knows that is as much his fault as it is that of the pagan goddess who is currently glowering up at him. The candlelight should soften her face but her anger has made it appear sharp, primal, and it is another one of those little things that remind him of exactly what she is. He finds that sometimes he loses himself in their friendship, if that is what this is, and forgets about the dangerous side of her.
"You're not being fair," she hisses at him from the chair she has slumped in.
"I'm not?" His eyes narrow and his lips thin and she opens her mouth to retort. "You know, I'm not the one who got us caught."
"I told you not to come after me," she argues, getting to her feet. "Hades knows I didn't tell you to drop the Trickster facade and let Castiel feel your grace!" She moves towards him, anger making her seem to stalk rather than glide as she normally would. "Idiot! I spent centuries weaving that net around you, helping you hide, and for what?" She is so close now that her chest is almost touching his, her head tilted back slightly so that she can stare up at him. "So you could throw it away the instant you got an opportunity to intimidate one of your siblings."
He knows that she is aware that she has gone to far as soon as the words leave her lips, the way that his own lips thin and his eyes narrow at her words are more than enough to tell her that. He goes unnaturally still for a long moment before he finally takes a stop forward, watching as she takes a nervous one back even though she is still angry with him.
"You would rather I let him kill you?" He demands, still moving closer, forcing her ever backwards. "Or that he hand you over to Zachariah?"
"So I'd be dead," she whispers, "they wouldn't have gotten any answers and you'd still be hidden." Her back collides with the wall behind her and he knows that the only reason she is backing away is that she is frightened of the grace that he is still displaying.
"Zachariah has a mean streak a mile wide," he reminds her, "he would have gotten his answers before he killed you!" Her eyes are wild now, looking for a way out and it is not going to be something that he allows her until he has gotten his point across. "I'm not stupid, Hecate, I know you've got very well developed survival instincts. You would have given me up long before then." Her reaction is physical rather than verbal and there is a sharp crack as her hand makes contact with his cheek.
"How dare you?" The words are hissed low and hard, his cheek stings where he knows she used some of her own power to lash out at his true self. "We have a deal, Gabriel, an arrangement. I agreed to help you hide among us, to show you how to be a pagan god. I helped you become one of us. Betraying you to them now would destroy me as surely as any torture they could come up with." She takes a deep breath. "You should have left me."
The words hurt him, far more than he expected them to, she is resigned to the idea that she may have to die for him and that is something that he does not want to hear. He never wants to hear that.
"Will you get it into your head, Hecate," he leans close again, this time putting a hand on either side of her head and boxing her in completely. "I don't want you to die." She stares up at him, eyes flickering over his face as she tries to find the truth behind his words, the reason that he may have.
"Of course," she whispers, "because if I'm dead I'm useless to you." There is a hollowness there, like she really does believe that she is only a thing that he has been using. It is almost like she thinks that he has been making all these trades and bargains with her all this time because she can be of use to him, the years they have spent together as nothing in his eternal eyes.
"No," his denial is perhaps a little too vehement and she shrinks back from him, "you stupid," he cuts himself off before he can insult her further, say something to her that both will regret. Instead he swallows his pride and his anger and forces himself to look her in the eye, to make a confession. "You're all I have now, Hecate," Gabriel brushes a hand against her cheek and is amazed when she leans into the touch briefly, "why can't you see that?" He cannot take the words back, the truth is out and he has to wonder what she will make of it.
"Gabriel," she breathes his name and it is too full of something like prayer and something like pity. He cannot stay. The lock down on the cabin is released with less than a thought and as he vanishes her second, more plaintiff, whisper of his name follows him.
SPN
Dean Smith is an eminently practical man. He does not have time for flights of fancy, loud music or loose women. He is nearly three weeks into this new job and this is the important one, the job that will give him that secure future if he can just make his position with Mr. Adler that little bit stronger.
Of course, what he is doing right now is likely to do that exact opposite, but after the I.T. guy, Ian, stabbed himself in the neck with a pencil right in front of Dean he has a strong desire to know what is happening in this place. Under any other circumstances Dean is fairly certain that after a night of rest and a few days furious work he would have let the matter of an employee committing suicide in front of him drop as just another day at the office, except that there were other things and he is not yet willing to let those go.
Dean Smith is a practical man, so the temperature in a bathroom dropping low enough to make the warmth of hurried exhalations visible can be explained on malfunctioning air conditioning. An employee killing himself, though not the first one in a short time scale, can be explained as someone who was over worked, under paid, and trapped in a place they cannot find a way out of. What cannot be explained away so easily is the way that all the taps came on while the Ian-guy freaked out, or the way that the soap dispensers suddenly decided that they did not want to hold the viscous liquid anymore. Most of all, however, he cannot explain away the man in the mirror who was not there and looked like he had stepped out of a portrait one hundred years ago.
It has caught his attention and he has no intention to let the matter drop until he has answered the question and he does not know why. He also has the urge to call his brother, Sam, who left a promising job as a lawyer a month ago with a nasty temper, a drink problem, and a disturbed young woman named Ruby. Dean has not heard from him since.
"You still here?" A voice asks from the door and Dean glances away from his computer to see Victor Henriksen, the company lawyer who plays golf with Adler every Wednesday morning and another face that Dean has to make nice to if he wants to advance in this company. Getting to the top is not just hard work after all.
"Just finishing up on a few things," he replies, waving a hand vaguely at the seat on the other side of the desk and looking back at the computer again.
"Adler won't like that you're still looking at these deaths, Dean," the dark skinned man warns as he settles. "It was a suicide and there was nothing you could have done."
"I know that," he insists, "logically I know that. But there's something not right about this. I mean the guy before him was two weeks off retirement," he can tell that Victor was unaware of this, that the other man was disinterested as soon as the word 'suicide' was attached to the body. "This guy, he could have cared less about the company and the job, but two days ago he was called to Human Resources and told to report to room fourteen-forty-four. He came back a changed man."
"Wait," the other man is frowning, "which room did HR tell him to report to?"
"Uh," Dean rereads the email. "Fourteen-forty-four."
"I know you haven't been here long, Dean, but even you know HR's on seventeen," Victor points out and they sit in silence for a moment. "How did you find that anyway?" Dean shrugs uncomfortably. "Never mind, I don't want to know."
"But you do want to know what's in fourteen-forty-four," Dean offers and Henriksen grins at him. Both get to their feet, Dean grabbing his jacket, and make their way out of the office intent on getting to the fourteenth floor and finding out why a branch of human resources is on the wrong floor.
On the way there, however, they bump into Castiel, and Dean has not yet managed to get the man's last name, who is apparently Adler's P.A.. Dean likes Castiel. The man can be a little abrupt and he really does not like to explain things, but he seems like a good, hard working, guy. What is horribly clear in the instant that they see him is that Victor does not like him.
"Dean," his name rolls off Castiel's tongue, all warmth and concern. "Mr. Henriksen," there is a pause before the rumpled looking man says Victor's name, a pause that makes it just as clear that the dislike is mutual.
"Hey, Cas," he claps other man on the shoulder and tries to ignore the flutter of something in the pit of his stomach at the way that Castiel looks at him, the heat in blues eyes that seems to imply that he knows the hunter far better than he should and that the dreams are more than just the vague half wish of a life lived fighting beside this man.
"Mr. Adler sent me to ask that you join him on the golf course in the morning," Castiel says, drawing him out of his train of thought, and Dean grins. This is what he has been angling for since he got here but the elation he feels is hollow, short lived, and an awful lot like the realisation that this is not something that he really wants. Castiel nods, not seeming to want a reply, and walks in the opposite direction, head tilted as though he is listening to something. Dean can practically feel Victor's dislike of the man rolling off him, but he does not comment. It is not the time for it and he simply raises eyebrows at his companion as they resume their journey upwards.
To the end of his days Dean knows that he will swear he never expected to find an actual ghost in the Sandover Building.
SPN
Gabriel is sipping a mohito when Hecate finally tracks him down in a bar that is far too close to Zachariah's game with Dean Winchester for her tastes, this probably means that the archangel is over compensating for his freak out earlier and this cannot be a good thing. If she is honest this trick of Zachariah's is the sort that would give Gabriel, with his centuries of experience, a run for his money. The other angel is apparently far more skilled at the art of mind fuckery than Hecate had ever given him credit for and this is not something that she is going to mention to Gabriel.
"Is there a reason you're sat here tempting fate?" She asks, signalling for her own drink and settling on the bar stool next to him. He flinches as though he expects her to start mocking his earlier honesty and Hecate knows that she might not be quite all there, she spends most of her time with an archangel these days after all, but she values Gabriel's friendship and is not going to hurt him like that. The words do not need to be said, though, because one way or another he will understand. She talks to the other pagans, it does not mean that she likes them.
"Just wanted a drink," he mutters. Like the rest of her kind, and now Gabriel through excessive training, Hecate likes her food and drink sweet. Baileys is her current tipple of choice and she takes a sip as her companion speaks, eyeing the collection of glasses around him.
"Gabriel, are you sure you want to do this?" She asks instead. "You could always ask them to take you back if not. It isn't too late for us to stop what we're doing." He is staring at her, eyes large and a little incredulous.
"Do you want to stop this? Do you want to watch while the Winchesters let the world burn and my family slaughter each other needlessly?" The words are hissed too low for the bars occupants to hear them, but Hecate is a goddess and she can hear far better than the average human. "I want this to be over, Hecate, I don't want any more of my brothers blood on my hands and I'm certainly not going to help them in their mindless quest to destroy one another."
"Good to know," she mutters, watching as Gabriel's eyes slide from her and to a couple across the room. The man is completely unknown to her, but she is aware that he is an object of some attention to the trickster archangel because the woman is familiar. The woman is one of his so called 'playmates' and that makes the man a target for one of Gabriel's 'moral lessons'.
She places her hand over his and squeezes gently, watching as he shifts under her grasp and looks back at her. His hand turns under hers so that he can intertwine their fingers, blood essence and disguised grace can lace together in the same way.
"So what's he done?" She asks, turning the subject to the more comfortable one of the man who has caught Gabriel's attention.
"Adulterer," the archangel supplies simply and she quirks an eyebrow at him.
"Adultery? You're not reverting to your old ways, surely?" She grins at him, softening words that could be incredulous. The archangel shrugs.
"I needed a pick me up," his brunette plaything giggles, "he just happened to present himself at just the right moment."
"So what's the punch line?" Hecate waves her free hand in signal to the bar man for another drink, head still turned so that she can look over her shoulder as the man places a kiss on the bare shoulder of Gabriel's illusion.
"Why don't you stick around and find out?" He smirks and quirks his eyebrows suggestively at her.
"Because watching people have sex isn't my idea of a good time," she responds.
"If they get that far I'm not doing my job right," he tells her confidently. She snorts at him taking another drink and staring down at their joined hands, the way that the black red of her magic mixes with the false chocolate of his disguised grace, opening her mouth to say something and starting when Gabriel speaks again.
"They're leaving," he mutters, "come on." He does not release her hand as he stands, pulling her to her feet and taking her to a parking lot somewhere across town. He settles himself on the hood of a Prius, helping Hecate to sit next to him and conjuring a large bowl of sticky sweet popcorn as he turns the window of the motel room into a giant screen so that they can watch.
"Pervert," she tells him, helping herself to a handful of popcorn from the bowl when he offers it and watching as the couple slip into the motel room of choice.
"I was repressed for millennia," Gabriel points out, wrapping an arm about her shoulders and pulling her a little closer as they watch, lips ghosting over her ears as he speaks again. "Let me enjoy the perks of freedom."
"Stop that," she slaps him lightly on the chest, watching as clothes are hastily removed by target and illusion alike.
"Make me," he challenges and leans closer to her as she tries to move away a little.
"I thought we were here to watch," she pushes a little tilting her head at the show in front of her. "I want to see the joke."
"I see you have furthered your unholy alliance, Gabriel," a depressingly familiar voice says and the archangel groans as he drops his head onto his companion's shoulder, the playmate vanishing and the adulterer's stunned cries carrying into the parking lot as he over balances and falls on his face. Hecate would find it amusing but for the fact that she is wondering how many more times Castiel is going to try to kill her in the near future.
"What do you want, bro?" Gabriel asks, obviously trying for cheerful and only just succeeding.
"Zachariah is aware of your presence," Castiel responds, sparing a glare for Hecate and she considers sticking her tongue out at him. "Or at least, of the Trickster you're impersonating."
"And you came to warn me, how sweet," Gabriel's eyes are wide and almost owl like in the half light of the parking lot as he tilts his head and smirks. "I can handle Heaven's top bureaucrat."
"And remain hidden as you are?" Castiel shakes his head. "I would rather not challenge you, brother."
"You won't have to," Hecates jumps in, sensing the danger here. "We're leaving now. Thank you, Castiel, for the warning." She can see the angel's surprise at her genuine gratitude, at the fact that she would willingly address him in such a way and that she inclines her head as she speaks in a sign of respect. Gabriel does no such thing, grumbling about uppity young angels and pagans who have forgotten their place. Hecate ignores him, simply vanishes and trusts that Gabriel has done the same.
SPN
Zachariah is annoyed with Castiel, he knows that the lower angel is developing a loyalty to Dean that may one day prove to be problematic, he is well aware that Dean's loss of faith and heart is down to Uriel's inability to wait until the right moment to approach Castiel and get him on side for this apocalyptic push, and he also knows that there is no way that Castiel would have been able to talk Dean into going back to hunting after everything that Alistair had told him.
Really the torturing of the demon should have been kept to one side until after the final seal has been opened but he will chalk this up to being a learning curve and let it be for now.
This make believe world that he has created for Dean, a place where the hunter is just a normal man thrust into extraordinary situations is a good one. Likely one that he will use again in the future if Dean decides to be difficult about his destiny. In a perfect world Sam would have been here as a foil to Dean's high flying business man. Instead he has been forced to use Henriksen far earlier than he had intended to as the eager voice to pull Dean back in. The angel had never dreamed that the former FBI agent would do such a good job of it, but rather than wanting to settle into this normal life that he could have had, the man is desperate to get back out there and start hunting, to save the world in a way that he has never been able to before.
Better yet, he will be able to steer Dean in the right direction, will be able to keep an eye on the hunter and the angel assigned to him so that Zachariah will know if Castiel really is getting too attached to his human charge.
He has to marvel at the sheer boneheadedness of the man, though, when Victor offers him a chance to go out into the world, to ghost hunt, and Dean turns him down flat. Perhaps Zachariah has done too good a job of making the hunter into a practical and straight flying man. There was no mistaking the utter glee on Dean's face, however, when he defeated his first spirit as Dean Smith.
So he goes to Dean, as Adler, and makes him an offer. Long days, no breaks but a future as high in the company as the man would ever be able to go along with a big bonus. Really the bonus is over generous and he knows that is what tips it. Dean shakes his head, refuses, hands in his notice over the destruction of one ghost and Zachariah is almost proud of that as he passes his fingers over Dean's forehead and watches the confusion descend.
"Wait. Did I, did I just get touched by," Zachariah can almost see the pieces fall into place in the man's mind, "you're an angel, aren't you?" There is something accusatory in Dean's voice, something broken and dismayed and the angel wishes that he could beat it out of the man but knows that such a method is not what is needed here.
"I'm Zachariah," he introduces himself, not sure what reaction he is hoping for, but certainly one a little more respectful than he gets even though Castiel has told him in the past of the man's utter disrespect for anything angel.
"Oh, great. That's all I need is another one of you guys."
"I'm hardly another one, Dean. I'm Castiel's superior. Believe me, I had no interest in popping down here into one of these smelly things," he gestures to his vessel, the one that he picked out to recruit Henriksen though Dean does not need to know that just yet. "But after the unfortunate situation with Uriel, I felt it necessary to pay a visit. Get my ducks in a row."
"I'm not one of your ducks," Dean snaps.
"Starting with your attitude," he all but hisses and he hates that he has to explain all of this, hates that he has to tell Dean that even though the man has daddy issues and feels that he is not worthy and not capable of this he has a destiny that he will fulfil. Dean is the weapon that they will wield in this war, the one that will make all the difference and if Castiel had not messed up so badly then they would not even be having this conversation.
That Dean fell back into hunting even as a man with no memory of it, that he did it so well with no training other than the muscle memory of years of practice, allows Zachariah to convince Dean that this is what he was born to do, that this is the reason that he is so good at what it is that he does. The elder Winchester gets to make a huge difference in the world, even under the command of the angels, and he gets to do it without having to change any of his core personality traits as much as they disgust Zachariah on occasion.
That Dean would agree is a given, Zachariah knew that this could not fail and even summoning Castiel to do the demeaning job of taking Dean to his car is another way of making his point. Zachariah is the one in charge and neither one of them can ever forget it.
Dean's displeasure at discovering he has to work with Henriksen from now on, however, makes this whole trip completely worth all the energy spent.
As I said, Gabriel and Hecate are obviously doing something when I'm not looking. I'll rectify it one day.
Artemis