I'd found a tree out back to sit by while I stewed over my angst. I knew that I was being difficult and unreasonable, but hell, I was still technically a teenager. I figured that I was entitled to throwing hissy fits every once in a while.

I was a bit surprised when it was Jesse who finally found me. I was twice as surprised that he looked even more pissed than I'd felt over the last year combined. Really, that was a lot of anger, but this boy was definitely winning the medal. He slumped down next to me and crossed his arms, glaring at the sunset.

We were silent for a good fifteen minutes, but after a while I found my anger fading. With a glance at him I could tell that his wasn't, and all that anger was kind of painful to even be near. "Do you want to talk about it?" I asked carefully.

He frowned. "No."

I nodded and waited, not about to leave him no matter how awkward this was. I could see that he needed a friend.

"Actually, yes." I grinned- half a win. "But only," he defended, "because I should tell you first before they fill your head with…" He sighed. "Not lies, but they're wrong."

"Um… that would make more sense if I knew what you were talking about, I'm sure," I offered, trying not to feel out of the loop. After all, I was the one who has stormed out for no real solid reason other than fear of facing myself.

"I'm sort of… the anti-christ."

"Um. That's… interesting?" I tried. He shot me a look and I shrugged. "What? How do you expect me to react?"

"Back away with wide eyes, run away screaming like a little girl, try to kill me? I've gotten all three at some point." The bitterness was so thick in the air between us that I swore I could cut it with a butter knife.

"But that would be… mean. I mean, I don't even know what the anti-christ is, but, it can't be that bad, right?"

He laughed, a slightly crazy, maniacal laugh, but I could tell that underneath he was just confused and a bit hopeful. And scared to be hopeful. Ah, the world was cruel.

He pulled out of his pocket what looked like an action figure and held it out to me. I took it, but I gave him a strange look first. "O-kay, what…?" But then I actually looked at it and I frowned, tilting my head as I turned the little plastic figurine around in my fingers. "Is that… you didn't…?"

Jesse grinned, a bit sadly, but he also looked pleased that he was finally getting the reaction he expected. Apparently, incoherency would do in the place of total disgust and fear. "Yes to the first, yes to the second, and to the unspoken, my powers are so far pretty limitless. They rival Chuck's, honestly."

"So… why didn't you tell us this before?"Jesse was giving me the crazy look, the look I'd only gotten once and grown to hate. "What?" I asked defensively.

"You're not… you don't seem scared. I mean, damn, Adam, I turned your friend into a fucking plastic doll and you aren't even worried?"

"Language," I chastised on instinct and he gave me an even more incredulous look. It broke the ice a bit, though, so when I laughed he laughed a bit with me. "Well, you're going to turn him back, right? He probably deserved it."

Jesse took the plastic mini-Cas back from me and set him on the grass. "Yeah, I'll turn him back in a bit." He shook his head a bit sadly. "You should have seen their faces. They were all backing away, terrified…. I hate them."

Poor kid looked so hurt. "You don't hate them. They're your family."

Jesse ran a hand through his hair as he laughed a tad hysterically. "I've had a lot of families. They've all caused me pain. What makes this one different?"

I looked up at the just barely visible stars in the new dark of the night and considered that. "Well, I reacted different, didn't I? So I'll make sure you don't always get hurt. Just think of me as your older brother. God know this family's dealed with screwier things."

"Huh." He sounded thoughtful, and a bit calmer. "Never thought of that."

I shrugged. "There's a place for every screwed up misfit here, kiddo. Speaking of. Are you the Jesse we know or was that a lie? 'Cause I'm accepting and all, but just curious…. What about Jen and Sami all that?"

"Nope, I'm still just Jesse." He sounded a bit wistful. "Or rather, I was, until I saw this stupid angel here and remembered."

"Remembered…?"

"That'd be getting ahead of my story."

He didn't continue, though, so I prompted, "Go for it."

"I will," he promised, "just trying to figure out where to start."

"At the beginning?" I was only half joking- generally finding the beginning was easy once you looked for it, and starting there was best.

"Okay," he agreed after a moment, and I was glad that my advice worked. Maybe being an unofficial big brother wasn't so hard. I mean, if Dean could manage…. "My… first mom was a human, possessed by a demon. I only met her once. She wanted to kill me when I was born, but instead she gave me up for adoption."

"That was kinda screwed up," I told him, nudging his shoulder. "No matter what you can do, it's not… worth killing an innocent kid over."

"Yeah," he agreed, "except it is. I'm supposed to help the devil end the world. It's my purpose. Which leads to my adoptive parents, who were nice if a bit smothering. They led me to believe all sorts of things were dangerous: pop rocks in Coke and those little hand buzzers. Which led Sam and Dean on a case to find out why people were hospitalized and dying from completely harmless objects."

"Dude… people died from joke toys and myths?"

Jesse looked sad again and I felt bad. Big brother duty failed. Okay, maybe Dean was better at this… "It was because of my powers. I believed it, so around me it was true. I was changing reality, and I was only a little kid. So your brothers found me, Cas figured out what I was and tried to kill me, my demon parent tried to kill them, I exorcised it, and then I ran off. Dean and Sam must have been kinda pissed… they wanted to keep an eye on me, but I felt like a lab rat." He shrugged. "I wandered a bit, almost got caught by demons and angels a few hundred times, and I gained control of my powers. Then I got lonely and sick of it and went back in time to before I was even born, established people in a very small little town in South Dakota, and turned myself into a three year old with no memory of my past life, memories of a fake life with that new family, my parents and Jen, and with surpressed powers destined not to come back until I remembered- if I ever remembered. I didn't really want to." He sighed. "I liked being just Jesse. I liked being normal and not hunted and not… I don't know, someone with the potential to end humanity?"

"The world is an effed up place," I agreed.

"That's why I made Cas promise not to tell when he recognized me. He did, probably more out of fear and curiosity than anything. He was human at the time, after all, and drunk a lot. After a while he knew that I didn't mean any harm and then he really did try to keep him promise. I shouldn't really blame him; he only admitted to know once Chuck, Sam, and Dean had figured it out."

"Did… did Crowley know? How did he not notice?"

Jesse shrugged. "He's powerful, but I'm way more powerful than him. He probably sensed something off, but my powers were suppressed. Once I remembered and they were back there was only a few seconds before I concealed them from everything and everyone around. Cas wouldn't have been able to tell, even as an angel, but he'd known me before."

"So, you're like crazy ass powerful?" I clarified. "Like, snap this whole state is dust powerful?"

"More like the whole continent, without the time it would take to snap. And that's just what I've tested." He grinned. "Scared?"

I shrugged. "Not… really. Not as scared as I should be. Guess I'm too trusting." I glanced over at the Cas doll that I could barely see now. "You gonna turn him back?"

Jesse sulked for a moment before nodding. "Guess I better. Think he'll be mad?"

"Only one way to find out," I evaded, because yeah, my bets were that Cas was pissed.

A moment later he was sitting there, and yeah, Cas was pissed. "I did not deserve-"

"Yeah, yeah," Jesse broke in, standing up. "If I say I'm sorry, are we good?"

Cas glared stonily at him and didn't respond, looking almost adorably like a sulking child. If Jesse and I hadn't spent the past three hours out here sulking, I might have almost suspected it. I pegged it as annoyance instead so that Cas' little angel pride could remain intact.

"Or, ya know, not," Jesse added with a grin. "It's not like I have to even pretend to be intimidated now." He cackled a true teenage evil laugh and headed off.

"You shouldn't have broken you promise…" I taunted Castiel and he turned on me.

"Do not make me smite you."

I shrugged. "Eh, God and the anti-Christ love me. I think I'm pretty safe." I got up and offered Castiel a hand that he grudgingly took, though I figured he took it more out of goodwill than because he needed help getting to his feet. "You should get back to Dean. Bet he's worried sick and already planning a way to try to kill Jesse to get you back."

Cas frowned. "Sam will stop him… correct?"

I laughed. "You might wanna go, just in case." Cas disappeared and I walked back to the house in silent. One angsty teen dealt appeased, one crazy new integral player introduced to the battle of the Apocalypse, and me feeling strangely good about how small my problems really were at the moment. Yeah, it was a nice night.