Chapter Thirty-Two: The Best Laid Plans of Angels and Demons
Disclaimer: That post about the history of disclaimers just came across my timeline again. Maintaining them is therefore an homage to Fandom History, lol.
Author's Note: Well, the good news is that it's a nice, long chapter! One of the longest, if not the longest. It's also one long, dramatic scene. Which I hope you enjoy!
-SQ
"Nice digs," Dean snorted, looking at the grimy, graffitied outer wall of the storage unit. He inhaled and immediately wished he hadn't. The back-alley entrance smelled like a hellhound had curled up and died here. About a month ago. "Trading in Gothic for Gotham?"
Crowley pulled a face. "I'm lucky to be alive," he said, with as much plaintive haughtiness as he could muster, given his surroundings of leaky drainpipes and overflowing dumpsters. "Lucifer had me trussed up like a dog in my own palace."
"Palace?" said Dean. "Oh, you mean the abandoned nuthouse. Classy." He ran a finger down the cement wall in front of him, squinted at it, shuddered, and wiped the grime on his pantleg.
"He kept me in a kennel!" snarled Crowley indignantly, with the air of a man who had just been bursting to air his grievances. The Winchesters exchanged an ill-concealed smirking glance. "He turned all his demons—my demons," Crowley corrected himself, "against me. They scour the Earth day and night looking to kill me!"
Sam was peering around the dim alleyway as though looking for hidden treasure, unimpressed by the demon's standard dramatics. "So, you decided to move in…here," he said. "Which is…where, exactly?"
"Not here," said Crowley in distaste, waving a notably un-manicured hand at the filth surrounding them. "Here." He inserted a small key into a lock which had been partially obscured by a ratty flyer whose message had long since been sacrificed to the elements. There was a groaning, whining, creaking sound, and Dean raised his hands to shield his head, convinced the whole building was about to come down around them. Instead, the sightly rusted corrugated steel door in front of the demon rose reluctantly into the air, revealing an interior incongruous with the rest of their surroundings.
The space within looked like Knockturn Alley had an affair with a Scottish Granny's antique shop and the result had been put up for auction on Storage Wars. Paintings, books, a wrought iron umbrella stand filled with wooden-handled umbrellas; no less than three distinct, and slightly tarnished, coats of arms; an impressive variety of skulls and antiquated but deadly-looking weaponry; and an ornately carved wardrobe filled with nothing but kilts.
"What the hell?" said Dean, stepping across the threshold and picking up a solid gold hand mirror off a shelf to examine it, making faces at himself in the dusty glass. "What is this place?"
"Put that down," snapped Crowley, snatching the mirror from the hunter's hand, and returning it to its place. "My personal lockup," he continued, striding past Dean further into the impressive and eclectic storage unit. "Keepsakes. Mementos. Things I'd prefer the rabble not to get their grubby hands on." He shot a pointed look at the older Winchester over his shoulder.
"Why are we here, Crowley?" said Sam impatiently, giving a critical look to a mannequin dressed in a chain mail shirt and a green silk necktie. "Where's this Hand of God you were talking about?"
"Not Hand, Hands," said Crowley, holding out his own for emphasis. They were uncharacteristically unkept. "Plural. I have the Rod of Aaron and the Horn of Joshua. One for each of you."
Sam and Dean exchanged another look, one which contained significantly less humor. They wondered if the plan beginning to form in their heads was the same one Lucifer and Michael had had all along. They wondered if it mattered.
"Well?" demanded Crowley after another few moments of silence.
"Well, what?" asked Dean, arms crossed over his chest.
"Well, do you want them or not?" asked the demon, all but stamping his foot in impatience. "I don't see any other Holy Artifacts with the potential to level the playing field against Amara lying around, do you?"
Sam crossed his arms in solidarity with his brother and leveled an unamused look at the once and possibly future King of Hell. "What do you want, Crowley?"
"Really?" said Crowley, doing a decent job of looking affronted. "I offer you not one, but two weapons of unfathomable power and this is the thanks I get? I really don't know why I keep bothering with you two—"
"Cut the crap, Crowley," Dean interrupted sharply. "You never do anything for free."
The demon shrugged, palms outward. "Fine. I don't." He didn't sound particularly chagrinned at being called out, only impatient. He gestured ostentatiously. "You can have the Rod and the Horn. If you help me exorcise Michael and Lucifer from Castiel's and Gabriel's vessels and then return them immediately to The Cage. See? Mutually beneficial all around."
Dean snorted, unconvinced. "Yeah, because it's that simple."
"Dean's right," said Sam. "Even if we could exorcise Lucifer and Michael out of Gabe and Cas, The Cage is damn near impenetrable. How exactly do you propose we accomplish, well, any of this?"
Crowley shrugged. "Not my problem, is it?"
"You'd better make it your problem, Crowley," Dean growled, picking up one of the wooden handled umbrellas and brandishing it at the demon. "Or did you forget that it's your ass Lucifer wants strung up as a hunting trophy?"
The King of Hell took half a step back, adjusting his collar. "I assure you, that particular detail had not slipped my mind," he said stiffly. "But I have fulfilled my half of the agreement: get you to Horn and the Rod."
"Do we at least get Rowena and the Book of the Damned?" Sam asked, absentmindedly running his fingers over the fabric of a heavy cloak that was draped over the corner of a nearby bookcase. Some sort of slightly sticky, very dusty velvet.
"Alas, no," said Crowley. "Lucifer snapped her neck." He didn't sound at all sorry.
Dean huffed. "Great." He shook his head; the feathers of a boa sticking out of a precariously stacked chest of drawers tickled his nose and he batted them away in annoyance. "Look, it doesn't matter. We will put Michael and Lucifer back in The Cage. Not as a favor to you, but because that's where they belong. But first we deal with the greater threat, and that's Amara. Because if she wins, there is no Lucifer. There is no Michael. There is no anything."
"Can you still be underestimating Lucifer?" said Crowley, his staccato voice rising toward hysteria. "After all this time? He has spent years marinating in hate against us—"
"Us?" said Sam, raising an eyebrow at his brother. "There's an us now? That's rich."
Crowley scowled. "He had me cleaning the floors with my tongue!" he railed. "He called me 'puppy'!" Sam suppressed a chuckle.
"As gratifying as those images are, Crowley," said Dean, taking a deep breath of the sour, musty air, "the fact remains that we need him. And Michael. They've been down this road with Amara before."
Sam nodded slowly. He'd been thinking about this. A lot. "That's the reason Lucifer possessed Gabriel in the first place, it's got to be. To have the three remaining Archangels join forces together against Amara. They may be the only ones powerful enough to use to Rod and the Horn against her."
"Whoa, hold up," said Dean, turning to look at his brother in frank alarm. This was the first he'd heard of this. Or at least the first he'd allowed himself to hear of it. "Okay," he said, trying to slow his suddenly frantically thumping heart. "Okay, so maybe they need Gabriel, but Cas isn't an Archangel. We're still going to exorcise Michael out of Cas and put him in a new vessel before this whole thing goes down."
"Dean—" Sam started.
"We're not sending Michael into battle inside of Cas!" said Dean forcefully. He turned angry, beseeching eyes on his brother, begging him to understand what he wasn't able to put into words, especially not in front of Crowley. He knew Cas had likely agreed to this with the expectation that he wouldn't come back from it. The damn angel was idiotically self-sacrificing like that. And Dean couldn't let the last thing he'd said to Cas be…what was the last thing he'd said to him? He couldn't remember, which was even worse. Certainly not the really important thing, the thing he'd been so sure he'd have more time to figure out how to say. Hell, the thing he hadn't even been fully conscious of wanting to say perhaps until this moment. Focus, Dean! He forced the words out past the acid in his throat. "What if he doesn't make it?"
Sam winced. The thought had occurred to him, and not just about Cas. "Dean, it's a strong vessel," he said, trying to placate his brother, knowing it was pointless, knowing he had to try anyway. "It's held Cas for years, and we know what he's been through. I'm guessing it can hold Michael." He didn't hazard a guess on any of the angels' odds of surviving a faceoff with Amara.
"It?" demanded Dean. "It's not an it, Sam, it's Cas."
"And Cas wanted to do this," said Sam quietly, holding Dean's gaze. His voice dropped a decibel. "They both did."
"Yeah, and?" Dean paced the length of the lock up, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. He hated feeling helpless. It made him reckless. "There are times when I want Cas to grab me by the hips with all his angelic strength, bend me over the kitchen counter and—" he broke off abruptly at the looks on Sam's and Crowley's faces. "Anyway, that's not the point," he said, waving away the graphic image he had conjured. "Cas is family."
Sam sighed and tugged at his hair, figuring he wasn't exactly in a position to judge his brother's sexual fantasies concerning angels, all things considered. Or, rather, things that should be left to be considered at a later, less life-or-death moment, provided they all survived to see one. "I know, Dean. And his choice deserves to be respected. His and Gabriel's," he added, forcing his voice to remain steady over the speedbump the Archangel's name wanted to insert in the path of his tongue. "All we can do is do our damnest to make sure they succeed, and live through it to come back to us."
"I hate to break up this little love fest," Crowley drawled from where he leaned, one shoulder braced against the cold stone wall. "But can we get this over with before lose my lunch?" He straightened and walked over to a rectangular wooden box, hastily clearing several books, which looked suspiciously like copies of Carver Edland's Supernatural novels, off its un-sanded lid.
"The Horn of Joshua," he said reverently, lifting a curved, black object from the chest. "Blown by Joshua to bring down the Walls of Jericho, and obtained at great risk to Yours Truly. And the Rod of Aaron," he added, gesturing to the second object lying lengthwise in the faded purple cushioning at the bottom of the wooden box. "Created by God on the sixth day and given to Aaron, brother of Moses."
Dean reached out a hand toward the box, but Crowley slapped it away. "Oh no, not you, big boy. My days of letting you handle my rod are over. You can have this." He handed Dean the Horn of Joshua, which the hunter hefted, surprised by its weight. "The rest is for after you've delt with Michael and Lucifer."
"Is it just me," said a voice that sent chills down Sam's spine and caused Dean to spin around so fast he nearly dropped the Horn, "or is it getting a little phallic in here?" Gabriel, or rather Lucifer wearing Gabriel's face (and the rest of him) stepped languidly into the dim light cast by the flickering sconces on the walls and the single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. His signature smile looked out of place on the younger Archangel's face. "You really thought you could double cross me?" he continued, advancing on Crowley, the look on his face twisting to become darker and more sinister, without losing its underlying blade of sharp humor. He picked up one of the books Crowley had cast aside, rifled through it, and snorted before tossing it carelessly over his shoulder. It hit the chain-mail-clad mannequin, knocking its necktie askew. "Me? You know I invented the double cross?" He tilted his head, eyes glinting. "Like, literally."
"I can vouch for that," said Michael, entering the room behind his brother.
Crowley's eyes widened and he took a step backward, the open wooden box in which the Rod of Aaron still lay making sharp contact with the back of his black coat. Sam and Dean immediately shifted into defense stances, Sam's hand going to the gun at his hip, Dean tucking the Horn of Joshua behind his back, further from the Archangels' reach. Lucifer's glittering red eyes swept from Crowley and the Rod to Dean and the Horn before settling on Sam.
"Thank you boys for doing the legwork for us," he said in a voice like poisoned honey. "Now just hand over the toys like good little doggies." His laughing gaze flashed over to Crowley, who bristled.
"Fat chance, Lucifer," said Sam. He hadn't drawn his gun, knowing it would be useless against the Archangel, but he was using his peripheral vison to scan Crowley's squirreled-away belongings for anything that might prove useful, while still keeping both angels firmly within his sightline.
Lucifer threw back his head and laughed. The corners of Michael's blazing blue eyes twitched. "What do you hope to accomplish?" He addressed Dean, in a tone that was obviously going for earnest, but landed closer to the mark of self-righteous. "You and your brother are not strong enough to wield the Hands of God against the Darkness. You know this. Give them to us, Dean, it is the only way."
Dean eyed the Archangel currently inhabiting the body of the man who had gripped his soul tight and never fully released it. "Are you strong enough to face her?" he challenged, taking in the pallor of the angel's skin, the strange reflective quality of his blue eyes, the erratic twitching of the muscles in his neck and at the corners of his mouth.
"Yes," said Michael with one hundred percent conviction. With the desperate passion of fanaticism. "Once you give us the Horn and the Rod."
Crowley's eyes darted involuntarily to the box up against which his back was pressed. Lucifer cackled.
"Oh yes, puppy, we know what you have there. We figured it out as soon as we realized you had beat us to the Horn."
"How—?" stuttered Crowley.
"The demons," said Michael dismissively. "They gave you up. You were not nearly as sneaky as you supposed. You were seen. And, of course, they hate you. All the demons in Hell. They were practically tripping over themselves to disclose their information once Lucifer and I returned. Can't really blame them, can you?" he added with a spasmodic shrug. "Oh, maybe once you were the evilest evil that ever…"
"Eviled?" provided Lucifer with a smirk. "Present company excluded of course."
Michael grimaced and rolled his eyes, but acceded. "Now however…" he cast a look of dismissive derision at the cornered demon, as though he were no more than an unpleasant and inconvenient stain he had found on the lapel of his second best suit jacket. "You're nothing but Dean Winchester's number one fan." He paused to consider Castiel's reflection in the same gold hand mirror Dean had picked up earlier, wrinkling the lesser angel's shapely nose. "Perhaps also present company excluded."
Dean felt a rush of burning anger suffuse his insides, as though a flame that had lain dormant had been fanned into life in the vicinity of his breastbone. The resulting white-hot sparks caught the surrounding currents of oxygen alight as they passed by, carrying them through his bloodstream until every nerve ending blazed with rage and with shame. The way Michael inhabited his younger brother's body, with the casual wrongness of a room in which every article of furniture had been shifted three centimeters to the left, made Dean's own skin itch. He wanted to grab Michael by the shoulders and shake the Heavenly Warrior free of Castiel's form. To bring the familiar lines of earnest concentration and curves of pure, unintentional humor back to his angel's face, made alien by the machinations of a foreign consciousness. He felt an almost overwhelming desire to either to punch Michael or kiss Cas, and the fact that neither option was available to him at the moment only increased the hunter's sense of hopeless frustration.
Lucifer advanced on Crowley like a well-fed housecat playing with a mouse that it's going to disembowel and then leave somewhere to be stepped on instead of eating. "I knew you were hiding something," he said, waggling his finger at the demon as though at a small, misbehaving child. "I could see that last bit of defiance in your eyes. I wanted to beat it out of you, but Michael convinced me to let you lead us here first. So," he stopped, his hungry gaze sliding sideways to the younger Winchester once more. "we're gonna take these," he reached out a hand for the Rod of Aaron still lying in its box at Crowley's back, "and then we're gonna take you." Sam felt a chill like droplets of ice water roll down his back. He couldn't tell if the Fallen Angel was talking to him or to Crowley. "And, oh, you are not going to like what comes next."
Crowley, it seemed, had interpreted this threat as directed at him, and had taken the only reasonable course of action for a three-hundred-year-old demon possessed of a vast array of skills and a powerful bargaining chip. He panicked. A blinding flash of light exploded out from the demon's right hand, that impossibly brilliant shade of white which made you believe it really was made up of all the colors of the rainbow. The other four occupants of the storage lock up threw their hands in front of their eyes automatically, even the two Archangels.
"Whew!" whooped Crowley, a sound halfway between a startled laugh and a crow of triumph. "So, this is what it feels like to be God. I have to say, I can understand the appeal, Cassie." He stretched out his free hand in front of his face, watching the Rod's power play over his fingertips in the form of miniature bolts of rainbow lightning. "Not bad, not bad at all. Tingly." He turned to Lucifer, grinning, twirling the blazing Rod in his hand like a drum major's baton. "Down low, too slow," he said, shaking his head at the Devil, unbridled delight dripping from his words. "You really think you could double cross me? Me? I perfected the double cross." The Rod came to a standstill at his side, and he tapped the end of it on the floor by his feet for emphasis. "Like, literally." His eyes narrowed as he considered the white-hot power still emanating from the holy artifact in his grasp. "So," he said slowly, eyes raking from the Rod to Lucifer in front of him, "if this can hurt something as powerful as the Darkness, I wonder what it can do to you…"
"NO!" shouted four voices at once, but it was too late. The Rod blazed to life once more, this time the beam of its power concentrated in a searing white lightning bolt which hit Lucifer full force in the chest and blinded the rest of them once more.
Michael was the first to recover, lunging forward to tear the Horn of Joshua from Dean's grasp, only the hunter's hands were empty.
"Looking for this?" Sam panted from the other side of the room, holding the Horn up over his head. Michael gritted his teeth, torn between charging the tall hunter for the Horn and checking the status of his younger brother, who had been blasted forcefully against the wardrobe full of kilts by the force of the Rod's power.
Gingerly, the Fallen Archangel picked himself up out of the wreckage of the armoire, pulling several large splinters of wood from the skin on his arms and chest. "Ow," he protested loudly, indignantly. He held up a jagged piece of wood, two whole inches of which were dyed a deep red. "You made me bleed my brother's blood." He advanced on Crowley, brushing aside his brother's offer of assistance.
Crowley, who looked more than a bit put out to see Lucifer still on his feet, lifted the Rod of Aaron and aimed it at the Devil once more, then he caught sight of it and his eyes widened in burgeoning horror. The Hand of God, which had radiated Divine Power moments before, sat dull and lifeless in the demon's hand, an incredibly old and beautifully crafted, but otherwise unremarkable, piece of wood. The Rod of Aaron was kicked.
"What?" said the Devil, his voice dripping with mock sympathy. "Out of juice?" Michael laughed, and the sound sent icy tingles of unease through the Winchesters' blood. Lucifer grinned at him. It was not a pleasant grin. "Puppy didn't know the Hand was a One Hit Wonder."
Michael nodded, the tempest roiling behind his luminescent blue eyes rising a notch closer to the surface. "I guess he should have done more research."
Crowley hesitated, his gaze flicking from the Archangels to the Winchesters, torn between wanting to vanish expediently, and not wanting to leave the one remaining Hand of God in Sam Winchester's possession. Seeing Crowley's attention waver, Michael also shifted his focus to the human brothers, half a second too late to stop them from slamming their bloodied hands down in the center of the sigils they had drawn on the wall and floor while the angels' attention was distracted. A circle of Holy fire burst to life around the two Archangels. Michael snarled, trying unsuccessfully pass through the fiery barrier. Lucifer spat on the flames, causing them to hiss and sputter. Sam and Dean exchanged a look. This wouldn't hold them for long. They had minutes, at the outside. Dean snatched up the gold hand mirror from the miraculously still intact shelf and held it up in front of the two trapped Archangels.
"Cas?" he said. "Cas, can you hear me?"
"Gabriel?" Sam added. His hand reached automatically for the feather than no longer hung at his throat. "Gabriel, I know you're in there."
Castiel's reflection blinked sleepily at Dean from the sideways angle of the mirror glass. "Dean?" he said blearily. "Dean, is that you? Where are you? What's going on?"
"Listen to me, Cas," said Dean urgently, repositioning himself so that he had a clearer view of the angel's reflection. Reflected fire framed the Seraph's visage, coloring his skin and trench coat a flickering orange. "We don't have a lot of time."
"Time to do what?" asked Castiel in muzzy confusion.
"Time to expel Michael and get you out of there!" On both sides of the mirror, the flames danced ever lower.
"I don't know, Dean," said Michael, his own gaze fixed piercingly on the hunter. "I think Castiel is happy with the arrangement. He did invite me in, after all."
Dean gritted his teeth. "Shut up," he snapped. "I wasn't talking to you. Cas," he pleaded, trying to fix the Seraph's vacant gaze with his own. "Whatever he said to you to get you to agree to this, it isn't true. We need you. I need you."
"Michael is much more powerful than I am," said Cas, in that same, sleepy voice. "He'll be much more use to you against the Darkness."
"Dammit, Cas!" Dean muttered, punching a writing desk which had been pushed up against the wall to his right. It only succeeded in making his knuckles sting. "What's wrong with you? What's he done to you?"
The angel in the mirror shrugged. "He mostly just leaves me alone," he said, sounding thoroughly unconcerned. His lips curled in a vacant smile as his eyes followed the movement of the dwindling firelight. "I'm just waiting here, you know, for the battle. With the Darkness."
Beside him, Gabriel's glassy-eyed reflection gave a sage nod. He looked drugged. "Yes, the battle. We're very important to the battle, you know."
"My baby brother was always the smart one," said Lucifer fondly.
"Shut up!" growled Sam. He faced Gabriel's reflection without completely turning his back on Lucifer. "Gabriel, Gabe,you're important here. Don't let yourself be used by Lucifer again! Expel him!"
"That doesn't seem like a very good idea," said Gabriel tonelessly, shaking his head and then glancing absently over his shoulder as though he had somewhere more interesting to be.
"Gabriel!" said Sam in a frustrated, hissing whisper. The holy fire was down to a few, feeble sparks now. "Snap out of it! We've got Michael and Lucifer trapped, but not for long. You've got to shake off this…whatever it is and expel them before it's too late!"
"Please, Cas," Dean added. "This isn't you, he's inside your mind, but he doesn't have to be!"
Finally, Castiel's blue eyes slid to Dean's green ones and blinked, as though struggling to bring the hunter into focus. His dreamy expression faltered. "Dean…" he said hesitantly, as though dredging up the words from somewhere deep inside himself. "You want…me to…expel…Michael?"
"Yes," said Dean emphatically. The knuckles of the hand gripping the mirror were white.
The Seraph's features creased in a frown. "You don't want…me to…combine my powers with him?"
"He's not going to combine your powers, Cas, he's going to consume them! Michael doesn't care whether you make it out of this alive, but I do!" The desperation and vulnerability etched into the lines on his face bled through the glass separating them, igniting a small spark of recognition, of resistance in the reflected angel's eyes.
"Dean—"
"It doesn't matter," said Gabriel. All traces of the trance-like fog were gone from his voice and his golden eyes were fixed on a point in the distance, as though something of great significance were taking place beyond the confines of the lock up or the mirror which reflected it. He spoke with a strange mixture of resignation and determination. "It's already too late."
As though prompted by his words, a deep rumbling filled the air, rising in both volume and intensity until it felt as though their very molecules were going to shake apart. The last of the flames went out with an anticlimactic puff of smoke. The mirror in Dean's hand shattered, one reflective shard slicing open the pad of this thumb. He cursed, discarding the now useless golden frame. Human and angel alike rushed to the entrance of the lock up, its demon proprietor having made himself scarce at the first opportunity. The sky above them roiled with tempestuous, dark grey clouds, shot through with blazes of crackling lighting. No rain fell, but the sky churned in a greater fervor than any of them had ever witnessed.
Sam and Dean exchanged a knowing glance. They didn't need anyone to tell them who was responsible for the disruption of the heavens, but a herald came along anyway.
"She's coming!" gasped a shrill, Scottish brogue, as Rowena appeared out of nowhere, any sound her teleportation spell may have made drowned out ten-fold by the thunderous rumbling above their heads. Sam and Dean barely had time to register their shock at seeing the purportedly dead witch alive and kicking when another figure appeared, seeming to wrap the shadows of the grimy alley around her like a cloak or a burial shroud.
Michael and Lucifer stepped forward as one. Sam and Dean exchanged another glance; Gabriel was right, they were out of time, and out of options. Wordlessly, hating himself for it, Sam passed close behind Lucifer and pressed the Horn of Joshua surreptitiously into his waiting palm, suppressing a shiver of revulsion as their hands touched for the briefest of moments during the exchange, the Devil's thumb caressing the inside of the hunter's wrist with an intimacy that made him want to vomit.
"Lucifer," said Amara, looking the angel up and down, "and Michael." She squinted, then let out a small huff of air through her nose. "And Gabriel. My…dear nephews."
"Amara," said Michael coldly, imperiously. "You were safely sealed away."
Lucifer shook his head, his eyes scrunching as his tongue darted, snake-like, across his lips. "You're gonna wish you'd stayed there."
The two Archangels reached out and grasped each others's hands, the Horn of Joshua clasped between their interlaced fingers. They raised their arms to chest height as first the Horn, and then their bodies, Castiel and Gabriel's bodies, began to glow. A blossom of blood red fire welled in the palms of each of their free hands and, when it had reached an intensity just below what would surely have seared the retinas of any unfortunate onlookers, the two eldest Archangels moved again as one, pushing the blazing, Godly power outward from themselves into a horizontal inferno directed straight at Amara's heart. The fire spread, engulfing her entire body until nothing could be seen of her except a vaguely humanoid shaped ball of flame. The air smelled like burning ozone, bringing tears to Dean, Sam, and Rowena's eyes.
It took several seconds for the afterimages of the blaze to fade enough for them to see clearly once more, but once they did, what they saw sent all three of their hearts plummeting right through the soles of their shoes. There Amara stood, as unmovable and immaculate as ever, not so much as a hair out of place on her haughtily raised head, while all four angels stood there with the Horn of Joshua in shocked defeat, every single one of them drained of power.
The now-useless Horn clattered to the stone floor, and an expression of deep offense crossed Michael's face, followed by a curious breakdown, piece by piece, of the Warrior's veneer of composure. He opened his mouth, ignoring the quelling glare Lucifer sent his way, but all that came out was a sort of angry, desperate keening. The look of annoyance on Lucifer's face melted away to undisguised fear as he suddenly found himself and Michael pulled towards the Darkness as though bound by invisible strings. He struggled visibly to maintain his composure as Amara reached out and laid a hand against each of their cheeks. "I think you and I," she said in her low, velvet-steel voice, "need to have a nice, long chat." Coinciding with the echo of her last word, there was yet another blinding pulse of light, which grew up around the three figures until it completely enveloped them.
"Cas!?" shouted Dean in alarm, lurching to his feet and stumbling towards them, only to be repelled backward by an unseen force.
"Gabe!" Sam choked out, half rising, and then falling back down to sit heavily on an upturned, three-legged coffee table.
The unearthly glow flared once, seeming to fill not just their vision, but all five of their senses, then receded. When the Winchesters forced open their streaming eyes, blinking and gasping, Amara and the three (five?) angels were gone.
AN: Yes, a lot of that is taken from two separate scenes from the show that I have amalgamized to fit with the altered timeline. Although combing through the episodes to rewrite scenes can be a pain, I enjoyed recreating and tweaking these ones, and I hope you enjoyed reading them, and the addition of Michael and Gabriel. I also hope that the shift (I think for the better) in my writing style towards fuller descriptive language isn't too jarring against my earlier chapters. I could go back and edit them to match, but…that's a lot of work. Please, if you have any comments, don't hesitate to share them in a review!
-SQ