I have chosen to use this 'Verse as my Nanowrimo project, so happy November! All the thanks to my lovely betas, Hyrule and Thallen, for throwing ideas at me! The next chapter came very close to being a new story altogether, but I managed, just barely, to make it fit. This story is also now a Good Omens crossover, because why not. Enjoy! There's not going to be a lot of spoilers for the book, Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, but I recommend reading the first page for context nonetheless.

If you'd like to come shout at me on Tumblr, my username is sageclover61 there (and on AO3.).

"Wake up! Wake up! Rafa, it's snowing!"

Raphael opened his eyes. He was surrounded by a mess of blankets and pillows and it took him a minute to remember that he'd come back to find Michael making a nest of the room they'd all been sharing and he had been of half a mind to sleep somewhere else. Michael had convinced him not to leave, but he'd refused to help. It was part of Michael's bonding ritual, after all. Raphael was not getting in the middle of that. Nope. Not happening.

"Rafa! Snow!" the fledgling repeated, reminding Raphael why he was awake.

The healer stood, stretching his limbs and shaking out the feathers that had stuck to his wings. They itched enough to remind him that he was about due a molt. It would have to wait, Lucifer hadn't had one in the cage nor Michael while he'd been sleeping. Lucifer needed his the most, of course, and he wasn't sure how Gabriel's feathers were doing.

Raphael approached where Samandriel was standing in the doorway. "Snowing. Where?"

"I show you!" The fledgling reached for Raphael's hand and the archangel allowed the fledgling to lead him. The healer wasn't sure where they were going, but he didn't mind.

Samandriel led him towards the Axis Mundi. The garden was at the very center of heaven, with the city built around and outside it. When Zachariah had chased the hunters through heaven, along the Axis Mundi, the road had led to the garden because they had not been able to see the city of heaven. The road always led to the garden, all roads lead to Rome. In the reverse, the mortal heavens were outside the city and backtracking along the road would lead deeper into them. When had Samandriel started following the Axis Mundi?

The Axis Mundi was not difficult for angels to navigate. They saw it for what it really was. Humans were less restricted by reality, and the Winchesters had been able to shape it as they'd desired because they were not bound by it. They'd seen it in a way their minds were capable of understanding, and because of that they had not followed a straight path and had instead created shortcuts.

Samandriel, however, was a fledgling, and did not adhere to the rigidity angels had been determined to bind themselves to. Their brethren had chosen to become emotionless and obedient beings without any expression of creativity or free will. They did not try to make changes.

The fledgling led Raphael along the Axis Mundi, and it shifted for him. Not noticeably, but Raphael felt it. It was shaped by Samandriel's desires, even if he didn't consciously notice.

They followed the road. It didn't enter any of the human spaces, just a walkway between and around them. Raphael had no idea where the road would lead, since they were traveling away from the garden. There were other roads to the gates of heaven, would it lead them to some edge of heaven? Would it travel past all the human space forever? He didn't know, wasn't sure he cared to know, except he didn't want Samandriel to get lost following it. Would the fledgling fall out of Heaven if he wasn't better supervised?

"We're almost there."

Samandriel's voice cut through Raphael's thoughts. He wasn't sure where they were, except just ahead of them it appeared as though the Axis Mundi stopped.

"Where?" he asked.

"There." The fledgling pulled him to the very end of the path and then a few steps further, pulling him into a human heaven.

The first thing Raphael noticed was the snow. It was snowing hard and within seconds his wings were coated. It would have obscured human vision with how heavy the snowfall was, but he was an archangel and he was less limited.

"Snow, Rafa!" the fledgling squealed.

Raphael smiled. He'd wondered at times if he'd failed in looking after the fledgling by giving him jobs i the healing of their siblings when Samandriel might have preferred playing. Except the fledgling had expressed joy at being "helpful" so it didn't seem so unfair. But he hadn't had a lot of time to watch the child at play, and here he was, expressing simple joy at this weather.

The fledgling tipped over backwards, laughing as he hit the snow on the ground and sent up a puff of snow as it gave way underneath him. Samandriel wiggled, dragging his hands and feet through the snow.

"What are you doing, Sami?" Raphael asked. He didn't quite understand the action, but it didn't matter because the fledgling was having fun.

"Humans think they're snow angels, but they don't know what wings really look like." He sat up and spread his wings before lying back down in the snow, getting snow all over his wings and leaving an impression of them in the snow.

The archangel stared in confusion, shifting his wings to shake off the snow. The cold made the itchiness worse. Can't molt now, not yet, he reminded himself. The cold wasn't very noticable to his form, except their wings were the most sensitive part of their bodies, especially around the time of a molt.

The snow stuck to Samandriel's wings and he squealed in delight. "Tickles!" he laughed, hopping around as though in an attempt to get the snow off.

Beyond the yard, there was a building. It didn't look like a house, more like an old tavern. There was a neon sign reading, "Harvelle's Roadhouse."

The door swung open and two people exited the building, both women. The first was a young blonde woman and the other was an older woman.

Samandriel stopped jumping up at and down, turning to look at the people. "Hello!" he shouted at them as they walked through the snow towards them.

"Sami," Raphael said as it looked like he was about to make a beeline for the blonde. "Do you know them?"

"That's Jo and Ellen," Samandriel answered.

"Have you ever made a snow person?" the younger woman asked, clearly addressing Samandriel. Without waiting for a response from either of them, she kneeled in the snow and started pulling it together as though pushing it together.

Samandriel watched curiously before moving to join her, already asking questions. Raphael didn't stop him, curious to see what the intention of the humans was. He glanced towards the older woman without letting Samandriel out of his sight.

The older woman did not approach Samandriel, but instead approached Raphael. "What brings you here?" she asked, straight to the point.

Raphael tilted his head, then motioned towards the fledgling. "Samandriel wanted me to see the snow."

The woman nodded. "Enthusiastic child. It didn't start snowing until after he arrived." She looked towards him. "Is that normal?"

Raphael had wondered if Samandriel had influenced the weather, but he hadn't thought about it greatly. He shrugged. "Would you like me to fix it? This place should reflect the person whose memory this is." He studied both of them, and found that neither women were memories, but he could also tell that this wasn't a creation of their memories, but someone else's. That was interesting, as it shouldn't have been possible. Whose memory was it?

"I think Sami would be upset by that, he seems to like the snow." The woman turned her head to where the younger woman and the fledgling appeared to be building some kind of humanoid thing out of snow.

Raphael wasn't sure that Samandriel had ever seen snow before this. The weather didn't change within the confines of the angel part of heaven and Samandriel wasn't really supposed to wander around out here all by himself. Humans in Heaven couldn't, for the most part, hurt Samandriel, but that didn't mean he couldn't get lost or that Raphael didn't worry about his charge. But the woman was right, and he'd never prioritized humans over Samandriel before. He wasn't about to start now.

"My name is Ellen," the human added after a moment. "That's my daughter, Jo." She nodded towards the blonde.

Raphael wasn't sure exactly how old the younger woman was, but he decided she was probably in her early 20's.

"Who are you?" Ellen asked next. "And what are you to Sami?"

There was a strange protectiveness in the woman's voice that Raphael didn't understand. It should have been pretty clear to the woman that Samandriel, at least, was an angelic child, and that he was an angel. So why would she feel any protective feelings towards a child that wasn't even her species?

"I'm Raphael," he said. He watched as Ellen's eyes widened. There was recognition in her expression, suggesting that she perhaps knew some about who he was. "Samandriel is my…" Raphael had to think about the answer to that, because there were plenty of English words that only carried some of the meaning behind what he was to Samandriel. "Ward, I think you would say? I'm his guardian, but that's not an exact translation, as he's a ward of Heaven. He's my youngest brother, and I take care of him."

"And let a child his age run around by himself?" She glanced at him, a bit skeptical, with a hint of displeasure.

"Why not? He's almost six thousand Earth years old and there's very little that could hurt him." Raphael swallowed, trying to ignore the thoughts trying to creep up of what could hurt Sami, had hurt Sami. He was also fairly certain that everyone knew what would happen to anyone who tried to hurt his fledgling. It had only needed to happen once.

Ellen raised an eyebrow. "He's six thousand years old, and still a fledgling? How old must the rest of your kind be?"

"Six thousand years ago, Earth was formed. We did not have a way to measure time before that, but time passes here at the same rate it does in Hell, with approximately ten years here for every month that passes on Earth. Sami is the exception, not the rule. He'll always be a fledgling. My fledgling."

Ellen's eyebrow did not drop. " Your fledgling. What, did you do something to keep him from aging or-"

" No ." Raphael's denial was more forceful than necessary, and his teeth clenched as he fought back the minor urge to smite her for suggesting such a thing. "No," he repeated after a moment. "I look after Samandriel because someone has to, and because I want to, and because I might feel some responsibility for what happened, but it was not my idea, nor my desire, and it was not something I supported. I smote the hubristic seraph who did this." It had been an unintentional display of Raphael losing his considerable control and there was no fighting the memories this time, but he didn't try to fight them as much as he might have otherwise. Samandriel was occupied, and this human seemed unlikely to share this with anyone else.

The eyebrow did lower itself this time, and Ellen nodded. "If it wasn't something you wanted, why did she do it? You were the highest ranking angel around at the time, weren't you?"

Raphael chose not to question how she knew that. Michael had been slumbering, and the rest had been long gone. Some of them were still gone, but that wasn't relevant. "A long time ago, I asked this seraph to lessen the pain of a suffering archangel whose agony would have killed him. I did not know that in doing so, she would continue experimenting to see what other things she could do. She sought to create an army of fledglings . Sami was her first and only test subject, and not only did she fail, but he managed to escape and find me. She had been chasing him, and in my wrath at such a blatant destruction of innocence, I smote her." He shook his head to keep the memories from overwhelming him. It was over and done with, and Sami rarely seemed the worse for wear for it. He was an excitable child, and he always would be, and there was nothing inherently wrong with that. "He is my excitable fledgling and I wouldn't have him any other way." A warmth softened the harsh tone of his words.

Ellen gave him a soft smile. "No, I bet you wouldn't. No parent worth their salt would have their children any other way."

Jo and Samandriel had a large ball of snow, and had placed a second, slightly smaller ball of snow on top of it. They were now in the process of rolling a third ball of snow.

Raphael and Ellen watched in relative silence as the human and the fledgling finished building the third ball of snow and then lifting it on top of the other two. It looked like it took considerably less work for the two of them to lift it than anyone would have guess.

"Now for the-"

"Wings!" Samandriel exclaimed. "We can't forget the wings!"

Jo looked confused. "How are we going to make wings?"

"I show you!" And then Samandriel proceeded to sculpt three pairs of wings onto the snow angel. At some point, there also ended up being a halo floating above the angel's head. They made eyes and mouth for the snowman out of colored stones they found in the ground.

When the snow angel was complete, Samandriel bounded over to Raphael's side. "Rafa! Rafa! Come see! I made a snow you!"

Raphael smiled. "Show me," he said, in English for the benefit of the humans. He'd long since learned to understand Samandriel's way of speaking, but that didn't mean he always knew what language the fledgling was using.

The fledgling took the archangel's hand and led him closer. "It has six wings, just like you sometimes. And your halo, you know, the fancy one!"

They walked around the snowman so Samandriel could point out these features. The fledgling was right about Raphael having three sets of wings. All the archangels had three pairs of wings, but the second two pairs had specific purposes and were not typically visible the rest of the time. But Samandriel had seen them all, once.

"Rocks look just like your eyes, Rafa," the fledgling added, and continued pointing out the similarities.

"You made a beautiful snow angel," Raphael said quietly to the eager fledgling.

"Good!" The child wrapped his arms around Raphael, hugging him. "Up!"

Raphael laughed and hoisted the fledgling up onto his hip as the child yawned and leaned into him. "Is it naptime, Sami?"

"No!" Sami denied, whining softly as he did, but he didn't ask to be let down or pull away. Instead, he put his head on Raphael's shoulder and closed his eyes.

Raphael turned to where Ellen and Hi were watching. "You'll have to excuse me, this little one could use some quiet time."

"No problem at all," Ellen said, still smiling. "You're both welcome whenever you want to drop by."

"Hear that, Sami? They want you to come back sometime." Raphael thanked the humans, and then headed back to the family nest. Samandriel was asleep by the time they returned.

The other three archangels in the family nest were still sleeping, so Raphael laid down a few feet from Gabriel and pretended to himself that his wings were not going to itch dreadfully once the snow started melting. Before he dozed off, he gently dried Samandriel's wings off so they wouldn't get itchy or chafed. His own wings were too big to try doing the same.

Sometime later he felt someone shake his shoulder. "There's too much to do for you to sleep another century!"

"If you wake my fledgling, I will end you," he growled without opening his eyes.

"Samandriel? He woke up awhile ago and went to play."

Now that Raphael was more awake, he could tell that this was Gabriel. That was not a surprise. He opened his eyes to find that Gabriel was right there. "Well, if you've stolen away my snuggle buddy, maybe I'll just have to steal you away!" He reached out to tug Gabriel towards him.

Gabriel laughed. He struggled, but not enough to suggest he really wanted free. "No! No! You can't have me!" He continued laughing, even as he moved to snuggle against Raphael's chest.

The Healer froze at the sudden onslaught of memories and nausea rose in the back of Raphael's throat. This brought up too many memories of a time before the Fall and other archangels he had snuggled with. A whimper escaped him against his will. He'd wanted his family whole, damnit, not just half.

Michael, Heylel, and Gabriel had been easiest to bring home, because the implications had been that they would be the ones in the middle of the world ending apocalypse. Raphael knew whose memories had been wiped, and that he was safe and at least a little happy, which would have to be enough for now, but then there were the two presumed dead. Samael, whose existence had been almost entirely wiped from their minds by the Creator, and Azi, Raphael's identical twin.

"Raph, it's okay," Gabriel whispered, instantly sobering at seeing his brother in distress and wrapping his wings around Raphael in a hug. "It's okay to miss them."

Raphael pressed his forehead against Gabriel's shoulder. He took a shuddering breath, and allowed himself to cry about what the Creator has done, just this once.

They laid there for a long time, Raphael finally letting go of pain and emotions he'd buried for thousands of years.

Michael and Lucifer watched sadly from where they were lying. Michael was mindlessly running his fingers through Lucifer's feathers. He was trying to groom them properly, but some of the feathers were falling out instead of coming clean. "I think your wings are trying to tell you something," Michael said. "When was your last molt?"

Lucifer shrugged. "Before the cage."

Gabriel leaned back when Raphael fell into an uneasy sleep. "I think Raph's pushing his down."

Michael shook his head in exasperation. "He always did have a harder time hiding his emotions when he was supposed to be molting." The eldest archangel glanced at Gabriel. "And what about you? When was your last molt?"

Gabriel sulked. "Before I ran away. I couldn't very well molt on Earth and give away the fact that I wasn't what I was pretending to be." He sighed. "And you, Mikha? Going to rub it in our faces that you probably molted like clockwork?"

"I took a very long nap, so I don't think I molted either." He eyed Raphael tenderly. "I imagine I'll have to ask Rafa'el about that."

"Let him sleep," Lucifer said. "If we're all about to molt, he's going to need it."

Gabriel untangled himself carefully without waking Raphael and stood up. "I'll be right back, but there's something I need to take care of real quick."

Samandriel watched with curiosity as Gabriel wrapped a piece of shiny paper around a book. "What are you doing?" he asked.

"An old friend of mine collects rare books, and I think he'd appreciate this one. I think it's the only copy left."

"Who's your friend?" the fledgling asked.

Gabriel shook his head. "It's a secret, Sami. But I think it's about time he came home."

Samandriel watched, eyes wide, as Gabriel waved a hand and the book disappeared. With the package gone, Gabriel led the fledgling back to the family nest.

In Soho, there was a thud on the doorstep of an old bookstore while a demon and an angel were drinking tea in the backroom.

"What was that?" the demon asked.

"I'm not sure, Dearest," the angel replied, standing. "I'll go take a look."

A few minutes later the angel had returned, this time carrying a wrapped present. The wrapping paper was a metallic blue color, and there was no tag identifying the sender or the recipient.

"What is that?"

"I'm not sure. Let's find out." The angel tore the paper carefully, revealing a very old book. The title was not very legible, but the angel was able to determine that it read, "The true story of the Arthurian Legends." Sticking out of the book was a piece of paper, so he pulled it out. As far as he could tell it was a letter, but it didn't have a proper heading and it was signed with nothing more than the letter G, which was more than any of the past objects left randomly on his doorstep had included.

"Why would someone called G leave that on your doorstep?"

"Someone's been doing it for a few thousand years, Crowley, and I have yet to figure out why."

The demon raised an eyebrow. "Have you kept everything? Perhaps there's a pattern or something. They must have left some clue as to their identity!"

"Maybe they did. I have saved everything they left, just in case the proper recipient ever dropped by. I'll be right back."

When the angel returned, he was holding a wooden crate. He placed it on the table in the back room so that they could both get a better look at the contents.

Crowley rummaged through the bin. He took care not to damage any of the contents as he laid them across the table, and when he was done, he said, "Aziraphale, I think someone knows you very very well."

"Do you really think they're for me?"

The contents of the box were two things. One of a kind books, many of them supposed to have been lost to the ages, and scraps of parchment that contained vague letters or the drawings of children.

"I have read all the books. They're all very interesting. But I thought the notes attached were too personal to be sent by someone I don't know."

Crowley glanced at some of the notes. "I think they do know you, Azi. I think you know them too, even if you don't remember it."

Aziraphale frowned, and then pointed at a specific book. "That was the first one that came. It arrived after a week I have never been able to recall. I had thought it was just a coincidence."

Crowley rolled his eyes. "And you didn't think that was significant?" He shook his head, then reached for the newest book and note. "If this really is the first time they have identified themselves, then there must be something important in this book that they want you to know."

"I am familiar with King Arthur, Crowley. We lived through it, remember?" Despite his words, Aziraphale opened the book.

Instead of words, this was a book of paintings. They flipped through it, and there was no writing or secret messages on the pages. It was just old paintings of various scenes that were recognizable as being of Arthurian legend.

Except there was a specific painting that stood out to them both. "Isn't that your flaming sword?" Crowley asked at the same time Aziraphale said, "That looks like our duck pond."

Crowley glanced at the note G had sent. It read, 'Now is the time to reclaim your rightful heritage!' The demon laughed as the realization hit him.

The angel stared at his demon. "Yes, Dear?"

Crowley couldn't stop laughing, but he eventually ground out, "They, they are comparing you to King Arthur returning."

"Oh," he said. "Does that make you Merlin?"

The demon laughed harder. When he finally stopped laughing, he grinned. "Let's go check out the duck pond."

"But if my sword really was there, wouldn't we have figured that out by now?" Aziraphale asked.

"Maybe someone put spells on it." Crowley shrugged. "Either way, I want to know. Let's go on an adventure."

That's how the angel ended up in the passenger seat of the Bentley, with Crowley driving far too quickly in the direction of the Tadfield duck park. When they arrived, they headed straight for the pond and went to stand in the middle of the bridge.

"Why would it be here?" Aziraphale asked, looking over the railing and into the water. It was murky, impossible to see the bottom.

"You never know," Crowley said. "Maybe it's part of that ineffable plan you're always going on about? You gave your sword to the humans and I led them astray. Otherwise we wouldn't be standing here today."

"Very true," the angel agreed. He closed his eyes. "We can't just miracle away all the water, the humans would notice."

"Getting water on this suit would ruin it," Crowley pouted. He reached for Aziraphale's hand anyway.

"It is my sword. If it's here, it should come." Aziraphale focused on what he could feel. The hand of his mate, the wood of the bridge, the water in the pond. Wards that he'd never ever noticed before, that felt familiar, but not in a way he could identify. He could only see them because he was specifically looking, but even then, others would not have. They felt kind of like his own grace, somehow. But beneath it, he felt the warmth he remembered. It had been a flaming sword, after all. His flaming sword. "Come, IADENAHMAD."

Meanwhile, in Heaven, an archangel shot out of slumber with a scream that even Aziraphale heard.

The waters of the pond parted and the sword flew into his hand. His wings sprung free, not one pair, but his primary set of wings and two more pairs that he'd forgotten about spread out behind him. His eyes glowed with grace long forgotten and the archangel of secrets and knowledge remembered everything.