A Supernatural Quickie: Chapter 11;

Bobby finally gave up when the sky turned from brilliant red to a dark dusty blue and it got too dark clearly see what was a screw to be tightened and what was his fingers. He walked back up to the house, pausing to pat the big softie his guard dog had turned out to be on the head. He stared for a minute, something nagging at him and suddenly he realized what it was—the lights were on inside, shining out brightly into the dark but it was utterly silent, too silent for both the Winchester brothers to have been inside together all day. They should be at each others throats by now, he thought giving the dog one last scratch behind the ears before heading inside.

"Hello? Anyone still living in here?" he called out.

"In here Bobby," Sam answered from the library.

Bobby walked around the corner seeing both boys with their noses deep in the books. He'd seen them in research mode before, but that was usually Sam doing most of the work with Dean complaining about a lack of pie and basically finding any excuse not to read. Now it was Sam who looked up at him in relief as he came in, stretching out his back and rolling his neck, and Dean who barely acknowledged him, a tall stack of books on the table beside him.

"Uhhh…I think there's some left over pizza in the fridge if you boys haven't gotten to it yet," Bobby commented casually, "I'll go heat us up a couple of pieces."

"That would be great," Sam said, obviously glad of the break.

"Later," Dean mumbled, flipping the page.

"Uh huh," Bobby sighed, walking over and grabbing the book out of Dean's hands, picking up the rest of the stack and putting them out of his reach before swinging a chair around and sitting down facing Sam and Dean. "Maybe you'd like to let me in on what's going on now then?" he suggested.

"Nothing's going on," Dean said.

"Sure, you show up here with a strange girl, have clearly been driving your brother like a slave all day---and while we're on the subject since when do you voluntarily do research Dean?—refuse food and I'm supposed to believe that nothing's up."

Sam looked at Dean, thinking that maybe they should tell him what was going on, that he could help, but Dean remained silent.

Bobby looked back and forth between the Winchesters, thinking that hey could be just as stubborn as their father sometimes.

Bobby picked up the top book from the stack, "Greek myth and culture? Not exactly your usual reading material here Dean."

Still more nothing.

"Look, I just want to help," he said, tossing the book back to Dean. "If you don't want my help, fine but you've been at it all day and it doesn't look like you've found much on your own."

Sam sighed, giving up and ignoring the look that Dean game him: "You wouldn't happen to know anything about Oracles, would you?"

"Oracles? As in the Greek version of a soothsayer?" Bobby frowned.

"Soothsayer?" Dean echoed, looking interested for the first time.

"Yeah," Bobby said, getting up and walking over to the bookshelf on the far wall, searching until he found the right book. "As in a fortune teller but the real deal, no cheap five dollar fortunes pulled from crystal balls from them. Here."

Dean opened the book that landed in his lap, carefully turning the pages of text and detailed illustrations—there were crones sitting beside fires tossing bones in the dirt, women staring into fires or water with tiny pictures dancing in the depths, and girls cloistered high on pedestals while smoke rose around them, offerings at their feet.

"There's lore on people who could predict the future from nearly every culture on the globe," Bobby said sitting back down, "But it's very rarely a happy ending, even among the Greeks…"

"What do you mean?" Dean asked, not liking where this conversation had turned.

"Think about it," Bobby shook his head looking at Dean, "You've got this power that no one understands to see things that come true, imagine what that would be like, how terrifying it would be not only for you but for everyone else who doesn't understand it any more then you do. People fear what they don't understand Dean, and for good reason."

"What happened to them?" Sam asked.

"Remember the Salem witch trials? Most girls were killed as soon as people found out about their abilities. The ancent Greeks were slightly more humane about it then that," Bobby observed. "They released that these people could be used and so they stuck them in temples, called them the voice of Apollo the God and people brought their questions to the oracles to answer. They were revered."

"Well that doesn't sound so bad," Dean said, looking at the picture of the girls dressed in robes, presents and gifts laid at their feet.

"What happened if they saw something that people didn't like though?" Sam asked, seeing it from a different perspective. He knew what it was like to be different, to have everyone even your family look at you like you were something a little less then human.

"Then you had to choose between telling what you saw or lying and taking the consequences either way. We're not just talking about 'who am I going to marry' questions remember, Kings and Emperors went to oracles to determine the outcomes of war, political strategy—if you got that wrong or foresaw their loss they could order that you be cast into the pit," Bobby reached forward and traced the dark gaping hole that separated the girl in the drawing from the supplicants. "It was there to always remind them how close they lived to death," he said quietly.

Dean swallowed, suddenly very glad that he'd started this while Rachel was still asleep.

"That girl upstairs," Bobby said as if reading his thoughts, "she wouldn't happen to be…"

"An oracle," Sam confirmed.

Bobby whistled, leaning back in his chair. "I don't think you two realize exactly how rare this really is…they're haven't been any real oracles that I know of in decades…centuries maybe. She could know how the battle with Lilith is going to turn out, where the seals are, anything…" Bobby trailed off as the impact of the possibilities astounding.

"Ummmm…" Sam started, hating to burst Bobby's bubble but not wanting to leave him with the wrong idea. "She doesn't see the future."

"I thought you said that she was an oracle?"

"Yeah, well apparently they can see more then the future," Dean said sourly.

"Like what?"

"Like Hell."

"Hell?" Bobby asked incredulously.

Sam nodded, shrugging his shoulders. "Apparently so."

"You're sure?"

"The Angels sure seemed pretty sure," Dean spat, still angry thinking about those so called messengers of God dragging them apart, keeping her locked up in a nut house and drugged.

"Angels?" Bobby asked, beginning to get a sinking feeling in his stomach.

"Yeah," Sam confessed, looking guiltily away. "We kind of had to kidnap her from them…."

"From the Angels? The good guys?" he questioned, hearing Dean mutter something under his breath.

"They were drugging her Bobby," Sam tried to justify it without getting into Dean's supposed history with the girl.

"Well that's not surprising," Bobby said getting a pounding headache and thinking that it would have been better if he'd just let it go. "Oracles visions are supposed to be enhanced with drugs, keeps them in an open and receptive state."

"Yeah, well it also makes it a hell of a lot easier to keep someone captive against their will," Dean growled.

Bobby rubbed at his forehead, feeling the headache build. "There isn't anything else I should know, is there?" He asked, half afraid of the answer.

"Oh," Dean sighed, figuring at this point it was all or nothing—or at least most or nothing. "Other then the demons that are trying to kill her and keep her personal peep hole into hell closed for good? Nope."

"Is that all?" Bobby said sarcastically, two could play that game.

Sam opened his mouth to defend their actions but at that moment they heard a scream from up above them, followed by the sound of a window breaking, the glass falling and tinkling like sparkling stars off the roof to tumble to the ground.