A/N: Sorry it's late in the day, I got distracted talking to an old friend as I was trying to finish this after work. Enjoy some slightly different season 4 stuff.

2009 – May

Part 4

Dean glared as he grabbed his car keys and his phone, shoving both of them into his pockets. Natalie glared at his back, rubbing one of her hands as Charlotte struggled for words. Dean stomped out of the room and Charlotte turned to Natalie with a small sigh, "He didn't mean it."

"I meant it when I punched him," she bit back as she turned away to grab some ice for her hand.

Charlotte ground her teeth together and followed after Dean. She grabbed his arm before he climbed into his car and turned him around to face her. "It's not her fault."

"She was supposed to be watching him, not sleeping upstairs and leaving the damn door open."

Charlotte narrowed her eyes at him and shoved his shoulder. "You're pissed, I get it, stop taking it out on us."

"Well what am I suppo-"

Charlotte shoved his shoulder again, making Dean stumble back against his car. "Stop it and think. What do you know?"

"Sam's gone to find Ruby and Natalie decided to take a kip upstairs leaving the damned door open." She raised a brow at him and gave him a look before he sighed, "Well who else could've let him out?"

"Ruby? The angels? They can work some impressive shit on people. Stop playing the blame game and find your brother." She reached out for his hand and squeezed his fingers gently, "Take a deep breath," she went on in a softer voice, "and just take this calmly." Dean closed his eyes and nodded, taking slow breaths. She smiled at him and brought his hand up to kiss his knuckles, "You sure you want to do this alone?"

"Yeah," Dean breathed out, flicking his eyes open to watch her, "he's my brother."

"Mine too," she teased with a smirk.

He smiled briefly at her before he let go of her hand and grabbed his keys, "I'll call you."

"You better."

Charlotte stepped back into Bobby's house with a small sigh before she slowly approached her friend. "How's your hand?"

Natalie glared at her and shifted the bag of ice around her hand. "I hope he gets a black eye."

Charlotte smiled and sat down on one of the kitchen chairs with her arms folded across the backrest. "I hope so too. Don't take it personally."

"I won't," Natalie mumbled before she dropped the ice into the sink, "but he needs to think before he speaks sometimes."

"Try most times," Charlotte sniggered. "He's got a lot on his mind at the moment, so I'll give him a break." Natalie gave her a look and Charlotte held her hands up, "Except for blaming you for Sam getting free. He doesn't get to accuse you of something like that."

"Has Matthew answered any of your calls yet?"

Charlotte sat up a little straighter in her seat and pulled her phone out of her pocket. "No," she said before she scrolled to his name and pressed dial. She flicked her eyes up to Natalie with worry and listened to the ringing tone continue. "And it worries me. He's with Anna and apparently with his grace again. But it'd be nice of him to say hi and tell me that he's fine."

Natalie raised one brow and flexed the fingers in her sore hand, "He is an Angel right? All powerful, super strong angel?"

"Naive angel," she muttered.

"How old is he? Do angels even age? I mean, aren't they around from the start of time?"

Charlotte shrugged a shoulder and hung up when the call went to the answer phone. "Well, there's a lot I still don't know, and if he answered then I'd be able to tell you."

"You know," Natalie started with a shrug, "maybe he does know better, I mean, he was an angel before your dad right so maybe you should give him the benefit of the doubt."

"Anna tried to kill me, then kidnapped me to be tortured."

Natalie rolled her eyes, "Drama queen."

Charlotte swung an arm out with a small smirk and tried to hit Natalie's side with a, "Hey!"

Dean watched Sam leave the motel room with a frown. He wanted to talk to Sam, alone, about this, about all of this, but he couldn't do that with Ruby in the picture. He knew that if anybody was to blame it was her and with her gone, he hoped that Sam would think clearly. Ruby was a demon and demons lied, it was as simple as that.

He gave it a few more seconds, until he was certain Sam had left, before he approached the door. He pushed it open, stepped inside and froze. The door closed behind him and he frowned, straightening up to see four white walls staring at him with fancy gold decorations. Large paintings were hung about the place with a large marble table in the centre of the room. Dean took a few cautious steps into the room, his eyes focusing on the beer in ice on the table and the platters full of burgers.

"Hello, Dean," Zachariah said and Dean looked up at the angel who stood on the other side of the table. Dean glanced around the room with a small frown, "You're looking fit."

"What is this? Where the hell am I?" He looked around the room, wondering why Zach was talking to him and not Cas. Wasn't Cas the one who'd been dealing with him? Keeping an eye on him?

"Call it a Green Room," Zachariah said as he grabbed one of the beers from the ice bucket. "The big finale is close, so we're keeping you safe." He held the bottle out to Dean with a wide smile, "Sit back and relax."

Dean eyed the bottle before he blinked and looked up at Zach, "Keeping me safe for what exactly? Way I heard it you guys want this apocalypse, so remind me, how am I supposed to stop Lilith?"

Zach's smile didn't fade from his face. He stared at Dean for a few seconds before he put the beer back down and his smile started to slip from his features. He sighed and shook his head, "Well, I guess the cat's out of the bag." He shrugged his shoulders with a sly grin and pulled out one of the chairs at the table. He sat down, propping his legs on the table, "You're not going to stop Lilith. Lucifer. You're going to stop him. It's been written since the day your parents met, well, since forever really."

Dean blinked and reeled back slightly before realisation hit him and he narrowed his eyes at Zach. "You let Sam out?"

Zach tilted his head to one side with a grin, "Well, not me but an associate of mine."

"You son of a bitch," Dean whispered.

Zach chuckled and held his hands up, "Sorry Dean, fate's had this battle written for years. It's going to happen one way or another, whether you like it or not."

Dean curled his hands into fists by his side. He glanced around the room again with a glare, "And all the angels are in on this? Cas too?"

"Of course not, we couldn't have a riot on our hands. Not everybody would agree that having this big showdown between Lucifer and Michael would be best, but imagine a paradise on Earth when we win."

"Fuck. You," Dean spat out.

Charlotte tapped her finger against her phone as she glazed over the news on the laptop in front of her. It wasn't anything interesting, and she was passing the time until Dean called her. It had been twelve hours now and she hadn't heard a single thing from him. She'd left him two voice mails and four messages with nothing in return. On top of that Sam hadn't answered any of his calls and she was getting more and more worried as the minutes ticked by.

Bobby had left three hours after Dean when he'd received an urgent call of distress from one of his old hunting buddies. Natalie had been glued to her phone, practically begging Sam to call her before she'd passed out on the couch from exhaustion.

Charlotte felt her eyes grow heavy with the need to rest, but she didn't want to close her eyes, not when she had three people not returning her calls. It ate away at her with worry and she tapped her finger a little slower against her phone. The words on the screen started to blur and she rested her finger on her phone as she took deep breaths.

"Just for a second," she thought to herself as she folded her arms on top of the table and rested her head down. She yawned and closed her eyes, her mind and body already starting to drift off.

"Well if that isn't a change."

She felt warm trickles down the back of her neck and over her chin and cheeks. Something told her that they were blood and she shook her arms with the instinct to run, only they were shackled above her head and she felt panic rise within her chest.

"I've been doing some research," Crowley exclaimed happily as he set a bloody knife down onto a table of bloodied tools. "I'm not going to bore you with details, but I do have people to thank. I guess."

"What,"Charlotte mumbled, her speech slurred, "are you talking about?"

Crowley grabbed a branding iron and turned to face her with a grin. "A little something to keep me entertained whilst everybody up there," he pointed to the ceiling above his head, "runs around biting each other's ankles."

Charlotte shook her arms, the muscles heavy with pain and aching, as Crowley moved over to the open fire he had burning on the other side of the room. He set the branding iron into it and Charlotte tried to see what was on it and tried to figure out how she could get out of there.

"Hush now," Crowley chided, "you won't even remember a thing."

"Fuck you," she growled.

He smirked and gave her a wink, "You already have."

Charlotte ground her teeth together and glared at him, "I'm going to kill you."

"I'll be waiting," he mocked as he grabbed the branding iron and showed her the red hot flat end. She couldn't figure out what it was, she'd never seen it before, and she pulled and wriggled on the chain that held her up as Crowley moved behind her. "This is going to hurt me a lot more than it's going to hurt you," he whispered as he grabbed her shoulder to pull her towards him.

A moment later and she reared her head back with a yell of pain, her muscles tensing as she tried to move forward away from it. The pain went on and on and when Crowley finally released her shoulder Charlotte's head was dipped, her eyes closed with tears falling down her cheeks. Her fingers twitched as they slowly uncurled and she took short, shallow breaths. She hissed with a small cry as Crowley ran his fingers over the mark he'd just burnt into her shoulder, "Beautiful," he whispered.

She bolted up, her eyes wide and her shoulder itching. She panted as she stood up, knocking her chair back, and ran out of the room and up the stairs to the bathroom. She locked the door behind her and yanked her shirt over her head, tossing it to the floor as she turned to look at her shoulder in the mirror.

There was a smudged something, raised and pink in colour, on her shoulder and she turned a little more to try to get a better look at it.

A vicious knock sounded on the door and Natalie's fearful voice filtered through a moment later. "Charlotte? Are you okay? What's happened? Charlotte?"

Charlotte stared at the raised pink mark for a moment longer before she unlocked the door and looked at Natalie with panic in her eyes. She turned her back towards her and pointed to the pink mark and said, "What does that look like to you?"

There was a few moments of silence before Charlotte felt Natalie's fingers on her shoulder and she held her breath before Natalie sighed, the shrug echoing in her fingertips, "Like you caught yourself on something? Maybe the edge of a pole? Why? What's going on?"

Charlotte turned her back a little more to look at the half moon shape on her shoulder and she swallowed nervously, "I don't know," she whispered.