Yes, Raven is a less snarky version of Constantine. The only difference is that he is closer to a researcher than an exorcist and actually knows how to use magic.

It had been two months, and Sam was slowly going insane.

He might have cut Bobby out, trying to bring Dean back from hell...except that Dean apparently wasn't in hell at all. The demon called Crowley had been quite irate about that.

Apparently someone stole his identity to make a fake deal, and now he was getting the worst of the fallout, next to Alistair.

Lilith was pissed, because Dean wasn't in hell and Alistair had been seen kidnapping him. Except Dean wasn't on the racks and there was no sign of hellhounds.

Which meant someone else had the hunter.

Ruby had barely escaped with her life when she inquired about Dean. It had only set Lilith off.

To Sam that meant one thing.

There was a very, very high chance that Dean was still alive.

To make matters more confusing, he kept finding weird messages in his e-mail from someone called 'quoth_the_raven'. Messages that he was forced to ask Bobby for help translating.

Finally by the third month, Sam noticed a pattern to the messages.

There was always some form of backwards writing on it. Words written in a way that he had to read differently in order to find out what it said.

So when he accidentally knocked over the only copy of Dean's contract...his brain had been conditioned to find patterns out of chaos.

He took one look at the contract...and noticed it had a weird writing style to it.

On a hunch, Sam held it up to the light. From the front, it looked normal...but on the back...

"Oh my god... Bobby, you have to see this."

"What is it boy?"

"Look at the contract when you hold it to the light and read it from the back."

"I'll be damned. It never occurred to me the demon used mirror writing to make this."

Using a small hand held mirror, Bobby read the contract slowly. The further he read, the higher his eyebrows went up in disbelief.

"What?"

"You're not going to believe this."

"It can't be any worse than Dean in hell."

"Dean's not in hell. He wouldn't have ended up there had the year ended anyway. No hell hounds, no sudden violent deaths, and more importantly, no demons."

"What? I thought..."

"This wasn't a demon deal. Though he still has to repay the one who brought you back in order to even the scales. He has a few more months before the remainder is up, but it doesn't say to whom," said Bobby.

Sam borrowed the mirror, and read the contract himself. Like Bobby, his eyebrows shot up to his hairline by the time he got to the last sentence.

It basically stated that the "Contractor" would owe four to five months of "service" to the one raising the soul of one Samuel Winchester in an undisclosed location. The maximum amount of time before the contract was activated was a full year after it was set, but it could be activated early.

In exchange all information save for the location itself would remain with Dean Winchester, who would be dumped at a random location of his choice...alive.

The blood was apparently the main thing tying Dean to the contract at all.

"Dean's alive," said Sam, relief filling his features.

Which meant he had no reason to stick with Ruby, seeing as how she had been operating on the belief Alistair had snagged his brother early.

She, after all, had been the one to identify the demon in the first place.

Dean grinned when he found the scarecrow sleeping in the chair, book tilted to indicate he had almost dropped it in his sleep.

Raven was skinny as hell, and pale as a ghost. It was clear he spent most of his time in Nevermore and only went out to do bulk food runs and pick things up to keep the library updated.

From the look of it, Raven had fallen asleep while reading again.

It was hard not to like the sarcastic little shit. Raven would spring these random pop quizzes on Dean, then have him sort the section of the library it was in.

Dean learned more about hunting in the scant few months he lived inside Nevermore than he had in ten years of hunting.

Sure, he was a wizard, but from what Dean had seen Raven was more likely to do things the hard way than rely on magic to get it done.

Except the dishes. He hated doing those.

Dean walked to the closet and put a thick blanket over the midget wizard. He had found out early on that Raven was more likely to wake if moved (even if he was light enough for Dean to pick up with ease), but putting a blanket on him was something he had learned to tune out.

Hearing the light snoring, Dean had to hold back a laugh. It was easy to see Raven as another little brother he had to take care of, because while he took immaculate care of himself, it was clear he wasn't used to being around people in general.

Dean wondered what had caused someone who was about his age to willingly shut himself away rather than deal with the outside world.

As if in response to his concern, Raven started flinching.

Dean didn't know much about people, but he recognized PTSD pretty fast when the whimpering started along with the violent twitching.

His dad had the same thing till he started drinking heavily to cope with the memories...then he became so jaded to it all that he worked until he passed out cold from exhaustion.

So when Raven was clearly having an episode, Dean didn't think twice.

He held Raven tight enough that he could move, but not so loose that he could thrash. Raven's blue eyes fluttered a bit, and Dean caught a few words while he was rubbing the man's back.

They sounded like names.

Suddenly the fluttered eyes flew open, and he realized someone was holding him. It took a few moments for the shuddering of his relapse to stop, and when it did he saw Dean.

"Dean?"

"You looked like you were having an episode," he explained.

Raven managed to sit back, any thoughts of sleep clearly gone.

"It doesn't happen much, but when it does, it happens so fast there's little chance of avoiding it," said Raven, wincing.

"What happened? And don't lie...I know PTSD when I see it."

"There was a magical war in England. A lot of good men and women died all because of some twit who had ideas of blood purity and the senile machinations of an old man who had some twisted ideas of what the words 'greater good' meant. I tried to leave repeatedly, because the pain of losing everyone I cared about hurt too much to keep fighting...but the angels forcibly dragged me back and arranged the death of my best friends and my girlfriend just so I would have to fill some bullshit prophecy."

Dean's winced was pretty telling. That sounded as bad as Azazel killing Sam's girlfriend Jess to force him back into hunting again.

"Needless to say I was pretty damn pissed when I found out why they had to die. So I felt zero sympathy for the angel called Zachariah when I broke his nose and cursed him so bad that it stuck for a month when he returned to Heaven. The bastard killed everyone just so I could do his job for him. So I took everything from England, changed my name, and moved to America where I found the last remnant of a secret society and he told me the back door to this place. All I had to do was keep the library from falling into the wrong hands."

Raven pointed at one of the weirder symbols Dean still couldn't make heads or tails of.

"That's an angel-warding sigil. Means heaven's servants can't come in no matter what they do. It wouldn't stop them from smiting the place, but that takes too much out of them. It would require more than a reluctant wizard for them to use it. And I have a hex first policy on all angels."

"So angels are real?"

"Real and bigger assholes than most of the people back in England I know."

"Think you can get back to sleep?"

"Not after having a relapse. I thought I was almost over those damn things."

"What happened?" asked Dean.

Raven looked him in the eye, before swearing as his eye started to bother him.

"Damn contacts. Give me a minute to change these out and grab a few beers and I'll tell you."

When Raven returned, Dean was caught completely off guard when he realized with a start that Raven's eyes were actually green. The same shade as his own, hidden behind a pair of red wire frames. In his hands were some home-brewed beers. Raven figured he had the room for a still, so why not use it and save on the cost?

"Green eyes?"

"People tend to remind me I have my mother's eyes, so I chose blue."

Dean shook his head, and accepted the alcohol Raven handed him.

Raven took a deep breath and began to tell Dean why he chose to hide himself away, rather than deal with the world in general. Why he became the librarian of a massive library instead of a hunter.

Dean had to wince at some of the tale. It sounded far too much like what they had to go through.

Raven had joined the European division of the group, and had moved to America to avoid his growing notoriety and the memories. Once there he entered into the "magical Witness Protection" and had his name legally changed. Raven for his hair color and he took his last name from an ancestor on his mother's side.

And once he tracked down the last remaining North American member of the Men of Letters, he got the key to the back door (which lead straight through the motor pool) and agreed to maintain the library since the people who were supposed to do it were wiped out by Abbadon years ago.

Sure he was technically a junior member of the Men of Letters, but he was a legacy and he had magic to speed things up.

Raven got a home, they got a legacy to come and take care of the place, and everyone walked away happy.

Well, everyone but the angels.

"Damn. And here I thought our lives were crappy," said Dean, taking a large drink of his bottle.

"Well your lives make the top ten of crappy childhoods, but at least you had something close to a childhood. I didn't even get that much."

"Hell, you're practically an honorary Winchester."

"Honorary my ass," said Raven, swinging off the stool he was sitting on. He went into his room and brought back...a long piece of parchment.

Dean looked amused...right up until he recognized a name.

"No way."

"We're fourth cousins once removed. And that's before you get into the Campbell family, who have been legacies for even longer. Of course Henry Winchester appears to have used some sort of time spell to avoid being killed by Abaddon when she showed up and went on a rampage. I wouldn't be surprised if your grandfather suddenly showed up in the near future looking the same as he did when he vanished."

"How do you know this?"

"Zachariah has been a very busy angel. After I found out he was the primary force responsible for most of the crap I've lived with all these years until the 'prophecy' was completed, I decided a little payback was in order. So I did some digging...which ironically brought me to the attention of the Men of Letters. Through them I've been making a timeline tracking each and every movement of that damn seraph while he's on Earth or using his minions."

Raven lead Dean to another room, one he generally didn't bother with.

There was a massive white board with dates, places, and what happened.

The further Dean went on the board...the more pissed he got. Seeing his expression, Raven shrugged.

"Like I said, I've been tracking him after the fact. I figured if I got the jump on the bastard I'd be able to repay him for half the crap I've gone through in spades. Throwing a wrench in his plan to kick start the Apocalypse seemed like a good start."

"You're kidding."

"Nope. If you made a real deal, you'd get sent straight to Alistair where he'd break you and get you to wreck the first seal holding Lucifer the arch angel in his cage in hell. Not that I have anything against Lucifer personally, but I do against Zachariah."

Raven pulled out a random book of old prophecies from before America was even a proper country and read out the words for Dean's benefit since it was in old Latin. Not exactly something a hunter could read.

"And so it shall be that the Righteous Man spills blood in the Pit of Damnation, and the First Seal shall be broken by his hand."

Raven closed the book.

"For some unknowable reason, you fit the definition of 'The Righteous Man'. I have no idea why they're so fixated on you, but I suspect it has something to do with a convergence of bloodlines that create the True Vessels of the arch angels of Heaven. If I'm right, then you're supposed to be the true vessel of the arch angel Micheal. And that would also mean Sam might be the vessel for Lucifer himself."

Dean paled.

"Isn't Micheal a good guy?"

"Dean, angels have been away from Earth and the influence of humanity for centuries, if not longer. They're more akin to self-righteous warriors of god than fluffy idiots with halos. Remember the Crusades? Consider them the Templar ransacking Constantinople all in the name of their holy quest without a thought of the consequences or a care of the lives they've destroyed. They don't care about humans. They only take note when the higher demons start causing trouble."

Raven's eyes darkened.

"And the few decent angels I've met are generally those that have chosen to abandon the heavenly plain in favor of living among humans. Word on the supernatural grapevine is that God himself has had it with Micheal and Lucifer's argument and has gone in hiding among the humans. Hell, Gabriel left because he didn't want to be dragged into their fight."

Dean sighed.

"If heaven's not exactly pro-human, and there's no way Hell would help us...how are we supposed to survive?"

His green eyes glinted.

"By throwing in a wrench. Heaven's not going to do it's job and hell's more interested in dragging as many souls into the abyss as possible. So if both sides are against you...then it's time to say enough and call in the neutrals."

It was how he won the war, when he realized that neither side would let him leave to live out his remaining life in peace. He cast aside the Order of the Phoenix, and the Death Eaters were more inclined to kill him

So he tracked down every neutral and the students who had followed his lead before...and they started taking out anyone and everyone who tried to stop them. Good and bad alike, it made no difference. If they tried to stop them from using equal force to put an end to the bloodshed, they went down.

It was part of the reason no one was stupid enough to come bother him when he joined the Men of Letters. The last Ministry official who came to 'talk' to him left with enough spell damage that the Mediwizards at St. Mungo's had to put him in an isolation ward while they attempted to reverse half of it.

Raven had sent an apology, but had made it clear that next time he would pay attention to the hexes he cast on anyone trying to bother him instead of flinging them by reflex.

They wisely left him the hell alone.