Author's note: Thanks so much to CassXDeano, Maknatuna, Maddy Love Castiel, CherylB1964, FirechildSlytherin5, Keefer, RachelPhobia, kb18142, Frozeninspace, princessofd, PercyJfan1802, keacdragon, random yet lovable, Lewlou15, Bakkaneko, baileylovesyou0400 and XxZessxX for last chapter's reviews!

Special thanks to Treeni for beta-reading!

Now I know this chapter is really... different... but please bear with me. The next chapter will be much happier again, I swear!

12

Both Winchesters had gone to bed hours ago, but Gabriel hadn't seen a reason to retire for the night. Sure, he usually enjoyed the angel equivalent of sleep, but there were too many things on his mind. He'd probably only end up giving himself nightmares as things were. Being an angel meant that he generally was in full control of his dreams, but in times like these when he couldn't manage his thoughts, he lost control over the images his resting mind would conjure up as well.

There was no use denying it, Gabriel was getting too attached to the Winchesters. Hell, he was already too attached and he didn't want to let the kids go back to the impossible situation they had come from. The archangel had thought that he understood the brothers as much as it was possible to understand them before they had been children in his care. He had seen bits and pieces of their lives growing up, but seeing glimpses from the outside was nothing like having the horrid truth being slapped right in your face. He had thought he could judge them for making all the wrong decisions and acting stupid in general. Now Gabriel knew that he hadn't even had half the information he would have needed to really understand why each one of them had made decisions he had thought were so condemnable before.

Gabriel also had to admit that beyond the superficial similarities, Sam and Dean didn't have much in common with Lucifer and Michael after all. In fact, they had more in common with what the archangel would have wished his brothers had been like, than they did with what they actually were like. Hell, if Michael had been anything like Dean, he would have never cast his brother down to the cage and if Lucifer had been anything like Sam, he would have found it in him to love humans as their father has asked with no problem. Maybe they would have let all of heaven burn around them, but they would have stuck together to the end.

The archangel sighed deeply and got up from the sofa, to grab his cell phone from the kitchen counter. There were a couple of people who might have sent him a text message, even at this time of the night, but he hadn't expected Castiel of all people to be one of them. Actually, Gabriel hadn't thought that his little brother would even know what a text message was. However, he was holding the evidence that Cassy knew more than he had given him credit for in his hand.

"Yeah, right, forget it," Gabriel mumbled to himself with a huff, once he saw that the message only had an address in it. Like he was going to just up and follow any instructions Castiel was sending him! The archangel was playing babysitter for the Weechesters and that was that. He had no reason or obligation to get involved into anything more than simple child watching and entertaining duties!

It wasn't more than a minute later that Gabriel snapped himself to the address his brother had sent to him, anyway. He'd just add it to the list of reasons why he was going to punish Castiel later, if the seraph lived the see the end of the apocalypse.

The archangel kept himself in the shadows, using the powers that his status as a Norse god granted him, to mask his angelic presence completely. Castiel would hardly be thrown by the Loki disguise Gabriel had put up once more and Tarot had no business knowing that a long lost archangel was watching him being interrogated. If either one of the two other angels present noticed that Gabriel was even there, they didn't give any indication of it. From the looks of it, it was highly doubtful that Tarot was in the condition to be very perceptive, however. The archangel couldn't exactly blame him for that, either. Being trapped in a ring of holy fire alone was unnerving, to say the least and that seemed to be only the beginning of the problems the angel was having.

Tarot was sitting on the floor, his arms wrapped around his knees and rocking himself forward and backward gently. Gabriel couldn't deny that he felt the urge to just extinguish the fire and comfort his clearly distraught brother. It didn't help that the seraph's vessel looked like he had hardly left his teenager years behind him, his sandy blonde hair hanging over his face as he mumbled mostly meaningless words in a couple of different languages.

Castiel's eyes met Gabriel's for a short moment. It was obvious that the seraph had been waiting for his older brother to arrive before he was going to question the trapped angel. The archangel pressed his lips into a thin line and crossed his arms in front of his chest. Gabriel was by no means happy with being dragged even deeper into any of this and he would let Castiel know exactly what he thought about all of it as soon as he got the chance to.

"Have you put a spell on Sam and Dean Winchester?" Castiel asked in a sharp tone, his voice echoing around the mostly empty abandoned production hall they were in. Tarot flinched violently and tried to make himself look even smaller. His mumbling had stopped abruptly, but he never stopped the rocking motion he was trying to draw some sort of comfort from. It didn't exactly look like it was working.

"What kind of spell did you use?" Castiel went on with his interrogation, repeating both his questions two more times, even though the only reaction he got out of the panicking angel, was more flinching and rocking.

Gabriel was about to tell his dark-haired brother to stop it already and leave it be, since he clearly wasn't getting anywhere, when Tarot started to mumble once more. This time around the words he spoke made a little more sense than before, however.

"It's not right," the blonde angel murmured, raising his head just a little. He might have gotten a good view on Castiel's shoes instead of only his own knees, to be exact. "I told him. I tried to. It's not right. Time needs to flow. It goes forward… it… it's not right."

Gabriel already felt the stress induced migraine coming and he had little hope that it would get better, the longer he stood there listening to his brother's talk. Tarot might not have answered either one of Castiel's questions directly, but it was pretty obvious what the answer to the first question was. Not that there had been that much doubt about the sandy haired seraph being the perpetrator before. He was the only angel who was obsessed with all things time-related, after all.

"What kind of spell did you use?" Castiel repeated. The seraph's voice was still gruff, if not quite as harsh as before. It didn't make much of a difference, however. Tarot still flinched as if he had been slapped and pulled his knees closer.

"Tell me how to reverse it!" Castiel demanded when he didn't get an answer once more. With the state his brother was in, the trench coat clad seraph realized that he had to concentrate on the most important questions and press for the answers to those.

"It will pass," Tarot replied quietly after a few long moments of silence, "Time will catch up. It will pass."

The stony expression on Castiel's face said all too clearly, what he thought of his brother's statement. It wasn't what he had wanted to hear, despite the sinking feeling that Tarot might have spoken the truth. The dark-haired angel had to make sure.

"Tell me how to reverse it," Castiel repeated his demand, making sure not to miss even the tiniest flicker of emotion his brother was showing.

"I can't. Zachariah…" the sandy-haired angel had to stop speaking, as he flinched violently once more at the mention of the older angel. He managed to pull himself together and speak on with surprising clarity, however. "He added… something… to make them forget about angels and demons."

Castiel gave a tight nod and turned around, starting to walk away. He was certain that he had learned everything he could from his brother, so there was no use wasting more time. Even if the dark-haired angel had to accept that they would have to let the spell the Winchesters were under run its course, there were still other things he had to do. Castiel had not given up on finding their father and ending the apocalypse that way, just yet.

"Don't!" Tarot suddenly yelled, scrambling to his knees and extending his arm toward the other angel, as far as the ring of holy fire would allow him to. "Don't leave me here like this! I can't… I can't go back!"

The sandy-haired seraph knew that he would be taken in for questioning again, as soon as anyone caught wind of him having spent any time around the traitor Castiel, as the other angels called their blue-eyed brother these days. The very thought of being at Zachariah's mercy yet again, made Tarot shake violently once more.

"I will tell them everything, Castiel! I don't want to, but I will! They have made me talk before!" the angel added, his voice holding even more desperation than before, if it was even possible.

"You have no new information they require," Castiel pointed out in a nearly gentle tone. It was as obvious that he was trying to offer what little comfort he could to their distraught brother. As things were, it was obvious that it wasn't working in the slightest.

"They don't know that!" Tarot cried, "Just kill me now."

The seraph had little to no hope to escape with even the last little bit of his personality or sanity intact, if Zachariah got his claws into him once more. It was a fate worse than death that Tarot could clearly see in his nearer future.

"It would be an act of mercy, brother. I'm begging you!" the sandy-haired angel added in a clearly hysterical voice. Castiel didn't have to say the words for Tarot to know that his brother wasn't going to grant his wish, however.

The sandy-haired angel steeled himself, trying to get his trembling under control. Taking a leap over a ring of holy fire was supposedly one of the most painful ways to die for an angel, but it was the only option left to him all the same.

Tarot hadn't even taken one step, when a sudden gust of wind extinguished the flames. An aborted confused noise was the only sound that came over the seraph's lips before his unconscious body dropped to the floor.

"You have crossed the line, Castiel!" Gabriel stated, his voice thunderous, his face stony. "You are lucky I am not smiting your stupid ass right here right now!"

Castiel might not have been the one the archangel was really mad at, but he was the only one around to rage at. If Gabriel could have, he would have punished Zachariah for every last little thing he had ever done to Tarot or any other angel who hadn't wanted to play his game. He would have given Michael a piece of his mind, for ever allowing anything this fucked up to happen to any angel supposedly under his protection. The archangel couldn't allow himself to linger on these thoughts, however. He couldn't afford to get sucked into their family's issues and the entire apocalypse, any more than he already was! Castiel knew what Gabriel thought about all of this and had completely disregarded his whishes when he had asked him to come and witness all this!

"This is not my business and it will never again be my business!" the archangel growled, turning his back on Castiel and their unconscious brother on the floor, "Clean up this mess however you see fit and don't you dare to ever speak a word of any of this to me again!"

Gabriel had the presence of mind to reappear outside of the entrance door to the apartment he was sharing with the two Winchesters. It was hardly 4 am. so the precaution might have very well been for nothing. However, the two boys already waiting for the archangel on the other side of the door, prove his suspicions that one of them – read: Sam – might have woken up while he was gone.

Dean narrowed his eyes at the adult immediately, crossing his arms in front of his chest.

"Where the fuck have you been?" the older Winchester demanded to know. His younger brother had woken him up, close to panic, because Gabriel had been missing. Dean had spent some time trying to calm the eight year old down. Logically, both of them had known that Gabriel would hardly leave his own apartment behind just like that. The highly uncomfortable thought that they didn't have a phone number to contact Cas with, in case the other adult never returned, had made the waiting period very hard for the older Winchester, however.

"Dean," Sam whispered, pulling on the sleeve of his older brother's pajamas, nodding toward Gabriel who was just standing in the doorway looking at them. The adult hadn't said a word and he didn't look like he had gone on a joyride without them.

"I had things to attend to," Gabriel finally spoke, closing his eyes for a short moment, trying to shake off all the things he couldn't and didn't want to explain to the boys. The archangel opened his eyes again to find Sam standing right in front of him, looking up to him quizzically. Gabriel never managed to say another word before the younger Winchester had already wrapped his arms around him tightly.

The worry was rolling off the eight year old in waves, but there was also the urge to somehow make everything better and offer comfort. Gabriel didn't often feel like crying, but in that moment he definitely did. The archangel hugged the little Winchester back wordlessly, just holding the kid like he was being held.

Dean sighed deeply and approached the other two, putting one hand on Sammy's shoulder and one on Gabriel's. If the adult's fake smile was somewhat watery, the older Winchester didn't comment on it.