It was a lucid sort of nightmare. Cass knew she was asleep, but she wasn't quite aware enough to take control of the dream. Instead she was trapped, knowing that what she saw wasn't real, but powerless to do anything about it or to wake herself up.

The dream started in the mall she'd gone to with Pamela last week. She'd been flipping through racks of clothing, not really looking for anything in particular, and then she'd glanced up to see her sister.

"Alex?"

Alex was sitting at a little plastic table outside of a pretzel booth, popping the last bite of a buttery pretzel into her mouth. She didn't seem to hear Cass calling her name, even as she repeated it louder, shouting for her sister to wait as she pushed her way out of the store, dodging racks of clothing. Alex paid her no heed, disposing of her trash and standing up from the table. By the time Cass made it out of the store, Alex had disappeared into the crowd.

It went on like that for ages. Hints of familiar faces and voices, always just out of reach. Sometimes Cass would get close, but then Sam or Bobby would appear out of nowhere, shoving a book into her hands and telling her to read. She tried to push past them, but they held onto her, pulling her away, telling her that reading these books was important, and that no one was there, anyway.

And then Dean was there too, staring down at her without mercy, puffing on a cigarette and blowing the smoke directly in her face, sneering. "Yeah, well, you're stuck here, aren't you?"

He flicked the cigarette at her. Cass flinched away from the burning cherry—

And jolted herself awake.

For a while, Cass just lay in bed, steadying her breathing and letting her heartbeat slow down. She didn't want to go back to sleep, not right away. If she did, she was afraid she might slip right back into the same unsettling dream she'd just broken free from.

She glanced at her laptop and considered opening it, but decided against it. She didn't have the energy for any more work now. She'd already been at it for hours before she'd finally gone to sleep, poring over her notes and pulling out anything she thought the Winchesters might find useful, but which wouldn't be too dangerous to tell them. For now, it was just about the only productive thing she could do, since there was nothing they could do right now about the possible angelic civil war Cass had inadvertently started. All they could do was focus on a way to track down Lilith and try to break the lock of Lucifer's cage before the forces of Hell found another way to break the first seal.

Consolidating her notes into something she was comfortable sharing with the Winchesters was going to be a time-consuming task, to say the least. Not only had she written all of her notes with her eyes closed, and in a code that only she would understand, but the information was also overwhelming in its sheer quantity. She had re-lived her memories of watching Supernatural in chronological order, and since there was no way to remember what would or would not be important later on, she had written down everything, resulting in a huge notebook filled with detailed transcripts of every episode through season 11, plus a random smattering of information after that which she'd gleaned from watching the occasional episode or seen posts about on social media.

So now, Cass was transcribing all of that onto her laptop and attempting to put it in some kind of sensible order, all the while considering just which pieces of the vast amounts of information she had access to could actually be useful now that she'd completely disrupted the natural course of events. It was like building a fan wiki from scratch, and it was exhausting.

She wouldn't get any meaningful work on that project done tonight, though. She reached past the laptop to pick up an old, faded flannel shirt that had almost certainly belonged to Sam at one point, based on how many times she had to roll up the sleeves. The fabric was incredibly soft from wear, and it was still a favorite of hers to slip on like a robe over her tank top and sleep shorts, even after her little shopping trip with Pamela. Cass crept down the stairs carefully, avoiding the creaky steps and heading towards the kitchen on nearly silent feet.

There was a glow coming from inside the kitchen. Cass froze in the middle of Bobby's library, the light and the low sound of voices making her go still. Her first thought was that it was an angel, visiting in the night like she'd seen a few times before, but a quick glance around the darkened room showed that the warding sigils on the walls were still perfectly intact. And, listening carefully as she held her own breath, she could make out the sort of muted, tinny quality of recorded voices.

"You guessed wrong," a low voice said, barely audible.

Cass crossed the rest of the distance toward the kitchen slowly, but making no effort to keep her steps light anymore. She didn't want to startle a hunter, especially the one she guessed was awake and watching videos in the kitchen. From inside, there was a crow of recorded laughter.

"You only think I guessed wrong—that's what's so funny! I switched glasses when your back was turned. You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is 'Never get involved in a land war in Asia.' But only slightly less well known is this—"

"Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line," Cass finished, still keeping her voice low as she paused in the kitchen doorway.

Dean did not even blink. He leaned back slightly from the screen, which turned out to be not the laptop Cass had been expecting, but a tiny old portable TV-VCR combo she figured had to date back to the early nineties, if not the late eighties. It had an antennae and everything.

As Vizzini cackled on screen, Dean aked neutrally, "Can't sleep?"

Cass shrugged, not wanting to talk about it. All things considered, Dean was the best person she could have found in the kitchen at this hour. He was the least likely person in the house to press her about bad dreams or trouble sleeping even under normal circumstances, and certainly not when he was sitting hunched over the kitchen table, watching The Princess Bride on VHS at two in the morning.

"Water tastes better out of the kitchen tap than the bathroom faucet," she said lamely.

Dean shrugged and turned back to the movie, apparently satisfied that he wouldn't be asked to deal with her nightmares or, more likely, be asked about his own. Cass poured herself a glass of water from the kitchen tap and leaned against the sink as she slowly sipped, listening to Buttercup realize that the Dread Pirate Roberts was actually her beloved Westley.

The thing was, she didn't want to go back upstairs. Her little nightmare was utterly tame compared to the literal demons that must haunt Dean in his sleep, but that comparison didn't make her any more eager to return to her own bed. Cass took her time drinking the first glass of water, then poured herself a second and began to sip it even more slowly than the first.

At that, without glancing back, Dean pushed out a second chair at the kitchen table. Cass hesitated, feeling rather guilty for intruding, but ultimately the seat anyway, figuring Dean wouldn't have made the gesture if she was truly unwelcome. Dean did not look away from the movie, so Cass quickly turned her own attention to it as well, only stealing occasional glances to reassure herself that Dean wasn't silently fuming at her for interrupting his time alone. But after a while, seeing Dean gradually lean back in his chair, Cass began to wonder if her presence was not just not resented, but possibly even welcomed—likely for the same reasons that Cass had been relieved to find Dean in the kitchen, rather than Bobby or Sam.

Of course, Dean's relaxed demeanor only lasted until the scene with the machine in the pit of despair. It had been a while since Cass had seen this movie, and she'd quite forgotten that the classic movie she'd enjoyed as a child included a torture scene. Judging by the way Dean's fists clenched on the table, he had, too.

"So," Cass began awkwardly, breaking the silence and talking over the uncomfortable scene. Dean did not seem to mind the interruption, looking away from the screen to raise an eyebrow at her. "D'you just keep VHS tapes around in your trunk next to all your guns and silver knives and stuff?"

"Nah. Bobby keeps this thing in a closet with the only other tape that survived me and Sammy's childhood," he said, jerking his head at the ancient TV. "It was this or White Christmas."

"Classics, both." White Christmas definitely didn't have any torture in it, but it was summer.

"We used to have Who Framed Roger Rabbit, too, but we wore out the tape." A nostalgic little smile flickered on Dean's lips, then died. "And I don't even know what happened to the Scooby Doo tapes."

"Maybe Bobby threw them out," Cass joked. "Sets a bad example for children, teaching them there's no such thing as ghosts and monsters."

Dean huffed a quiet breath of amusement. "Yeah, maybe."

And then the scene was over, and the two of them fell quiet again as Westley was revived, the castle was stormed, and Buttercup was saved. When the movie was over, Cass put her glass in the sink and climbed the stairs to return to bed. Dean stayed behind, and Cass imagined that when the credits were done, he'd press rewind and start the movie over again from the beginning, and it wouldn't be long before the tape of The Princess Bride went the way of Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

The thought of transcribing more of her notes wasn't much more palatable in the morning light than it had been at two AM. So instead of picking up her laptop, Cass picked up her running shoes.

She hadn't gone for a run since she'd been here, though she'd been in the habit of running three or four times a week before. When she'd first arrived she hadn't had any proper shoes, and then once she got shoes she'd been preoccupied with Anna and Dean and… well, everything. But she might have made time for it anyway, if it weren't for the fact that she'd been wary of going out for a run all alone.

She had a lot of valuable information in her head, and a lot of very powerful beings who would be very interested in getting it out of her. Cass wasn't kidding herself—she might be able to defend herself against an average human, or at least outrun them, but she wouldn't stand a chance against an angel or a demon. Her near miss with Ruby just days ago had proven that. All in all, it was much safer to stay in Bobby's well-protected house.

But now that she was apparently a Prophet of the Lord and Archangels were required to assure her safety, she figured she was about as safe as she could get.

Sam looked up from an enormous book when Cass came down the stairs and raised his eyebrows at her when she began to tug on her shoes. "Going somewhere?"

"I thought I'd go for a run." Cass paused. It hadn't occurred to her to ask before, but she was pretty sure Sam went for runs at least occasionally on the show—she seemed to recall a few instances of him returning to whatever run-down motel room he and his brother were staying in in workout clothes, having worked up a sweat somehow. She didn't know when he'd picked up the habit, though. "You're welcome to come, if you want?"

Sam looked surprised at the invitation, and Cass rushed to add, "No pressure, of course. I'm sure…" Cass leaned over and tilted her head to the side to get a look at the title of Sam's book. "Uh, Recordes of the Evylls of Demons, is very engaging."

Sam huffed a laugh that was only half-amused and shut the book. "No, that… sounds pretty good, actually. Give me a minute to change?"

Cass nodded and busied herself getting her laces just how she liked them. Asking Sam to join her had been a spur-of-the-moment decision, mostly to be polite, and now she was feeling a little nervous.

She didn't want to avoid Sam. She'd only started because it seemed like every conversation they had ended up in disaster, either because Cass kept bringing up the unfortunate truth that none of this would be happening to her if Sam hadn't summoned her in the first place, or because Sam was alternately pressing her for information or trying too hard to have a heart-to-heart conversation that Cass wasn't prepared to handle. But Cass couldn't avoid him forever. They were living in the same house, working towards the same goals. He was going to be around. They'd just have to find some sort of middle ground.

Being around Bobby was easy. Even Dean was easier to be around than Sam, now that they'd got their shouting match out of the way. They'd yelled at each other, got it out of their systems, and then moved on, not feeling the need to bring it up again. They were on the same team, and that was the most important thing. It wasn't complicated.

Her relationship with Sam, on the other hand, Cass was certain would always be complicated.

"Ready?"

Cass stopped fiddling with her laces and straightened up as Sam came down the stairs. He was wearing shorts, which was… weird. Well, it was normal for running—Cass was wearing shorts, too, since it was already nearly 70 outside and the day would only be getting hotter. But it was still weird to see him in something other than flannel, and it was more skin than she had ever seen on him in person. It gave her a feeling of wrongness, like the way she'd felt in high school when she'd run into one of her teachers at the grocery store. She shook her head and pushed those thoughts out of her mind as they left Bobby's house and began to run along the side of the country road, putting the sun behind them.

For the first mile, Sam stayed quiet, matching Cass's pace. Cass knew the silence couldn't last forever, but she couldn't think of anything to say. Sam was the one who ultimately broke it.

"You okay?" Cass looked over at Sam in surprise, not expecting the question. At her look he explained haltingly, "Yesterday, with the angels… you seemed pretty shaken."

Cass pressed her lips together briefly, considering her answer. "I don't know. It's completely different from what I've seen, obviously. And that's scary, because it means I don't know what's going to happen." Cass shook her head. Her new status and all its implications still hadn't fully sunk in yet. "I'm not even supposed to be here. I certainly shouldn't be a Prophet."

Sam was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "But what if you are?" At Cass's puzzled look, he clarified, "Supposed to be here. I mean, if your name has been in the angel source code for thousands of years…"

Cass very strongly suspected that it hadn't been. She would bet good money that Chuck had just penciled her name in during or after their conversation as a fun little surprise to make things interesting, but she couldn't tell Sam any of that even if she wanted to, thanks to Chuck's other little present: the curse that prevented her from revealing his secrets.

So instead Cass shook her head and said simply, "I just don't buy it." And then, to avoid an argument, she added, "But I guess it doesn't matter, anyway. I'm here, whether I'm supposed to be or not. I'll just have to make the best of it."

Sam nodded, then furrowed his brow. His steps slowed to a walk, and then to a stop. Cass stopped a few steps ahead of him, confused. "What's up?"

She'd almost said What did I say now?, because apparently the only things that happened when she opened her mouth around Sam were arguments or guilt trips, but she'd made a deliberate effort to be optimistic just now, so she didn't know why Sam was suddenly looking so tortured and guilty.

"I just realized," Sam said slowly, troubled, "I never thanked you. For saving Dean, for… any of it."

Of course. Sam hardly needed her help—he found his own reasons to beat himself up. He drew a long breath, looking earnest and probably preparing to give a speech about how he could never thank her enough for saving his brother, but Cass held up a hand to stop him.

"Please, don't."

Sam shut his mouth. Cass watched him sink in on himself, his face falling, and she stepped forward with a sigh to catch his gaze again.

"Sam." Her voice was low and calm, and the lack of anger in it made Sam meet her eyes. "We're on the same team, here. I don't want to keep score on this kind of thing anymore. I want to help you, and I want you to help me, and I don't want to fuss about thanks yous or apologies anymore unless we really fuck up."

Because they probably would fuck up at some point. Cass wasn't that optimistic. But she pressed on. "Can we do that? Please?"

Sam searched her face for a long moment, and Cass held her breath, waiting. Finally Sam nodded, a small, self-deprecating smile appearing briefly before he said, "Yeah. Alright."

Cass sighed with relief and stepped out of Sam's personal space. "Thank you."

This time Sam's smile was more sincere, his voice teasing as he pointed out, "You just broke your own rule."

Cass rolled her eyes and glared at him without heat. "Not what I meant and you know it. Now can we run?"

They returned to their prior pace, and the mood was much more relaxed now that they'd cleared the air. It felt good to run again, and now that the tension was gone Cass could actually enjoy the feeling of her feet hitting the pavement, of breathing fresh morning air and getting her heart pumping again. It was even kind of nice to have company, since she usually listened to music on her runs but didn't have a portable music player in this universe.

After a while, Sam broke the silence again, his voice a little mischievous but laced with challenge. "Race you to that tree."

Cass looked at the tree he'd indicated, which sat at the corner of a driveway maybe a quarter of a mile down the road. Cass shook her head. "Are you kidding? You're a giant. You'd clear that distance in, like, five steps."

Sam scoffed. "You're exaggerating." He paused, making a show of thinking about it. "It'd take at least ten."

Cass laughed and shook her head again. She already knew she would lose, but… "Okay. You're on."

Sam ginned. "On three?" She nodded. "One… two… three!"

Cass launched into the fastest sprint she was capable of. At first she pulled ahead of Sam, but she doubted that would last. A glance behind her showed him catching up, working far less hard than she was to clear the distance at speed. Then he passed her, making it to the tree about five seconds ahead of her and then stood waiting for her to catch up and come to a stop.

Cass reached the tree and bent over slightly to catch her breath, glaring slightly at Sam, who was breathing harder than before but was nowhere near as winded as she was.

"You're too tall," she accused breathlessly.

Sam chuckled and shot back, "Sore loser." He began to run again at the reasonable pace from before, and Cass caught up to him with a groan. "Speed isn't even really about stride length. It's about muscle to size—"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever." Cass glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and refrained from commenting that he very clearly had an advantage when it came to a muscle-to-size ratio as well. "It's also about practice. I don't usually do sprints—I focus on distance. I imagine you've had a lot more practice, and incentive, to sprint short distances." Cass would certainly have cleared the distance to the tree much faster if, say, a werewolf had been chasing her.

"Fair point."

The rest of the run went smoothly. They talked about running, then about Sioux Falls and the summer weather. Cass did not let herself be goaded into any more foot races with Sam, and the last mile was simply passed in companionable silence.

When they got back, Sam graciously allowed Cass to claim the shower first. Before she disappeared into the bathroom, Cass asked tentatively, "Same time tomorrow?"

"Yeah," Sam agreed. "Sure thing."

A few days later, Cass returned from her morning run to find Dean sitting on her bed with a pile of her notes in his lap. She raised an eyebrow at him, not at all concerned by the intrusion.

"A little light reading?"

Dean looked up from the notes and demanded, half-annoyed, half-amazed, "What language is this even written in?"

"Languages," Cass corrected, emphasizing the plural. "Plus a simple cipher." She didn't specify what sort of cipher, because the code was breakable if you knew how to get around it. Of course, then you'd have a mess of languages and a lot of abbreviations and shorthand that didn't make sense to anyone but her, but still. Better to be cautious.

Dean set the notes down, giving her an unimpressed look. "Starting to think you've got something to hide."

"I do," Cass agreed. "And I know that giving you bits and pieces instead of the whole story isn't exactly helping me earn your trust, but I just…" Cass sighed and tried to think of a way to explain herself.

"Look. Let's say I hadn't come up with the plan to ask Anna to save you. Let's say I just dumped all the information about angels in Sam and Bobby's lap." Cass folded her arms and eyed Dean skeptically. "Do you really think they would have carefully considered all the information and come up with a cautious, sensible plan? Or do you think Sam would have looked up the first angel-summoning ritual he came across, consequences be damned?"

"So you're saying protecting us from ourselves," Dean said flatly. "Is that it?"

Cass did not fail to notice that he'd avoided actually answering the question, and the quirk of her eyebrows communicated that. "I'm saying that if I'm going to try to change the future, I want to make sure it's changed for the better."

Dean let out a long breath through his nose, his posture relaxing. Tone lighter, he asked, "Anyone ever tell you you're a control freak?"

"Yes," she said frankly, then shrugged. "But, well." She gestured to herself and then Dean. "Kettle, pot." Dean grunted skeptically, but didn't argue the point. Curious, Cass asked, "Do you still trust me?"

Dean frowned and looked down at his hands. "I don't know." He paused for a long moment before admitting, "I think whatever angel mojo Anna gave me is messing with my head, and that I don't trust."

Cass blinked. "You think the irrational trust you felt came from Anna?" It actually made a kind of sense, Anna leaving behind a sort of impression, almost a memory, along with her grace. And now that Cass thought about it, that spare grace was probably what had allowed Dean to be able to understand Castiel and Uriel's voices. She wondered just how much grace Dean actually had, and what events might change because of it.

"It's not like there's this little voice in my head saying to trust you," Dean explained, running a hand over his face in frustration. "It's just this instinct. It feels like me, but it's not. Or, it wasn't."

He looked up at her then, eyes bright. "Am I even really me any more if I can't tell what's me and what's her?"

Cass hadn't paid enough attention to her college professor's lectures on the nature of the self to feel qualified to answer that question. Instead she offered weakly, "I think Sam and Bobby would have noticed if you'd undergone any significant personality changes." Dean did not look particularly reassured by that. "If it really is bothering you, I think another angel might be able to extract whatever grace she left with you." Angels seemed to be pulling grace out of each other pretty frequently in later seasons; it couldn't be too difficult to pull it out of a human, right?

"You think?" Dean sat up straight. "You heard from your buddy Castiel since you set him on the war path?"

It was extremely odd for Cass to stand there and have Dean Winchester refer to Castiel as her buddy. It was odd enough just hearing Dean say the angel's full name.

Cass shook her head. "No."

Dean furrowed his brow, assessing her. "You look worried."

Cass sighed and sat down on the other end of her bed. She was worried, because, "He hasn't answered any of my prayers."

She'd taken to praying to Castiel before she went to bed each night. Not for long—just a short little message about how she hoped he was okay, and that there were other angels who stood with him. She asked him to get in touch with her, to give her a sign that he was okay after his fight with Uriel and then winging off to Heaven to maybe-probably start a civil war. But he'd never answered, and each night of silence was only making Cass's anxiety grow.

"I want to believe it's because he's busy, but… yeah. I'm worried," Cass said earnestly. "Anna would still be alive if it weren't for me. I don't even want to think about Castiel…"

Dean surveyed her expression critically. "He's important, isn't he?"

Cass had to choke down a laugh at the question. Part of her found it funny that he of all people would ask, but another part of her was deeply sad. What if he and Castiel never became close, now that another angel had saved Dean from the pit? What if they never even had the opportunity?

Cass managed to force out words. "Yes. He was the one who was supposed to pull you out. He becomes your friend, your ally, your…" Cass shook her head, not able to fully describe the relationship between Castiel and the Winchesters, or Castiel and Dean in particular. "You're close."

"How close?" Dean asked suspiciously, looking a little unsettled.

"Just, close." Cass shrugged and explained with a bitter smile, "Close enough that when I first got here, I actually considered suggesting that you guys call me by my last name, because you call him Cas." Her smile fell. "He's a good person. Or a good entity, I guess, whatever. I just… I don't know if I could handle it if my meddling got him killed."

She swallowed hard and looked at Dean, hoping to convey just how serious this was. "And I really don't like the idea of getting mixed up in a fight between Heaven and Hell without him on our side."

Author's Note:

If you're as nit-picky as I am, you stopped part-way through this chapter when Cass was thinking about her safety as a Prophet and said, "Wait a second! If Cass has been a Prophet of the Lord this whole time, why didn't an Archangel smite Ruby when she tried to attack Cass?"

The primary reason is Because Plot, but the in-story reason is that both Raphael and Michael were so busy scrambling to figure out who sprang Dean from Hell that they were slow to answer the 'Prophet Alarm', and that by the time they might have got off their feathery asses the danger had already passed. And Gabriel, of course, would have ignored the alarm anyway.

Once again, thank you guys so much for all your reviews. It makes me really happy to know people are enjoying my extremely self-indulgent fix-it fic. Also definitely keep asking about characters/plot points you might want to see addressed, because while the Main Plot of this thing is already set in stone, the journey to get there is not and I've already added some additional scenes/character moments because people have brought up characters I hadn't thought about when I was plotting out the story.