I'm sorry about the delay, I wrote something awesome and then it crashed... :P

I hope it was worth the wait

- Sam's POV -

Despite Castiel's support and encouragement, it wasn't an easy task to get Crowley and Death to cooperate. We summoned Crowley first. He was pissy but I'm pretty sure it was because he still hadn't figured out how to capture and destroy Diana. He rolled his eyes when he saw the Devil's Trap painted on the ceiling.

"What the hell do you want?" he growled. When we told him our plan, and that we wanted his cooperation, he laughed. "You want me to help you save the life of the little whore?"

"Watch it," I snarled. Dean held his hand up in front of me and took a step toward Crowley.

"It's to our mutual benefit," he said.

"Just the way killing Lilith was to our mutual benefit?" he asked, raising his eyebrows.

Dean scowled, rolling his eyes toward me. I took another step forward.

"Look at it this way," I suggested. "With the power still in Diana, everyone's going to continue to scramble for power and control, including all of the demons that should be under your control."

"Oh, please," he rolled his eyes. "My subjects fear me. Always have and always will."

"There's only one of you, Crowley," I warned. "There are many, many of them. And you aren't exactly the most powerful thing that's after her. She fought a god the other day. And won. Who knows what she could do once controlled by someone more powerful than her. And even if she never is controlled, she'll come after you. And she'll win. Unless you help us remove and transfer the power. Then your rule will be restored and your kingdom will no longer be anarchy."

Crowley stared at us for a few long moments before lacing his fingers together.

"All right, I'll help you. But you'll have to sweeten the pot a bit."

Dean stepped up beside me. "What did you have in mind, exactly?"

Crowley's slow, oily smile spread across his face. "A year."

"A year of what?" I asked, folding my arms across my chest.

"A year during which my demons are untouched by you and yours," he smirked. "You leave them alone, they leave you alone."

"We can't control other hunters," Dean said. "We don't even know all of them."

"True," Crowley nodded. "But you can back off your little hunting cases and force the whore to close her legs around them as well."

I bit down on the inside of my cheek, trying to keep my cool. I knew that this was the deal breaker for Crowley, but I also knew that Dean would never go for it, and I couldn't blame him for not wanting to. Despite how nice a year off demons might be, a whole year of them having free reign could rack up an insane body count. We couldn't risk something like that.

"Fine," Dean suddenly said.

"What?"

"We'll do it," he confirmed. "A truce for a year. No attacks by you, no attacks by us or Diana, we swear."

Crowley's oily smile pulled at his lips again. "Good." With a flourish of his hand, he held a contract, then tossed it out to us. I pulled a knife from my belt and we each sliced our palms, letting our blood drip onto the bottom of the contract. As soon as the blood made contact with the surface, it danced across the paper until it formed our signatures. We tossed the contract back to Crowley and I bent to scrape the side of the Devil's Trap away.

"Nice doing business with you," he smirked, then disappeared in a puff of red smoke.

Death, on the other hand, was not so petty or power-hungry, and therefore not so easy to bargain with. Dean made sure we approached him in a way that he believed would maximize our chances of achieving his cooperation. I pointed out that we likely couldn't bribe Death, but Dean was determined to set everything up properly, if not to bribe, than to at least attempt to show respect and gratitude after summoning him.

As we explained Diana's situation and our plan, Death organized the fast food meal that Dean had gotten for him, and began to chew on some fries thoughtfully as we spoke, before swallowing and regarding us with some superior, almost disdainful, annoyance.

"Dean, as I have mentioned to you before, I am responsible for much more than just this planet. And as insignificant as this entire planet is to me, imagine how insignificant this one girl is. Frankly, I don't care."

Having had very limited experience with Death myself, I was highly discouraged at this, but Dean kept pushing.

"I know that you think she is insignificant and, by some standards, I'm sure she is, but you have to look at this as less about her one life, and more about the lives that she affects," he said. "You were the one who taught me how crucial balance is to this world, and how delicate it is. This power is affecting that balance wildly merely by being active. If it continues to grow and spiral out of control, we could have a genocide on our hands, I'm talking mass killings, nationwide massacres. In addition to that, the supernatural world is all out of wack, too, because everyone is scrambling for power and to capture and harness her. The removal of this power from earth is crucial to the delicate balance that you've showed me. It's necessary."

Death finished his fries and started to unwrap his burger with his long, bony fingers. "You know, Dean, as well as you are making your point about balance and how each life, especially one harboring such a weapon, is important to the development and even survival of others, I cannot believe that you are purely interested in restoring the balance that is my responsibility to preserve. Indeed, I believe you to be driven to this decision very much by your own emotions and desires for your brother, here, who has clearly fallen for the girl. Clearly, you are not asking me to help you spare her life to restore my precious balance, but to spare the feelings of your beloved little brother."

Dean folded his arms over his chest and sighed. "You know what? You're right. This is about love. I do want my brother to be happy and if Diana makes him happy, I want her to be around for him. But this is beyond that. Yes, Sam loves Diana, that's very clear. I love her, too, and I will fight for her. Because she has accomplished something that I didn't think was possible. She has changed my brother and I. She has changed who we are as people, how we look at the world and the people around us, and how we see ourselves and our jobs. This is absolutely about love. But it's not about our love for her, it's about her love for us, for everyone. When we first found Diana, she was afraid of us, and we of her. I thought she was a monster and was ready to kill her on the spot, but when I held a gun to her, she didn't run, she took full responsibility of anything she might have done and merely asked that I let her live so that she could try to make up for her mistakes. When we showed her the monsters that live in the shadows, she didn't run home and hide under the covers, she gave up any potentially normal and happy life she could have had to fight them. But Diana doesn't hunt out of spite or for vengeance, the way Sam and I were raised to. She doesn't hunt to kill the monsters. She hunts to save the people. Because she loves them, all of them. She's had a hard life, but she has made the best of everything she could. She was training to be a nurse so that she could save lives and help people; kids and families. She emotionally adopted maybe a dozen foster kids just because they were there and needed to be loved. When I treated her coldly because I didn't trust her and I didn't want to admit that I could relate to her, she met me with warm smiles and patience. I am a stubborn man, as you know, but this woman has changed me. I have come to love her like a little sister, not because she's handy on hunts, not because she's powerful, not because Sam has fallen for her, but because she is what a real angel should be. She's a symbol of hope, of all that is good about humanity. That is where the balance comes in. In this world, tiny and insignificant as it may seem to you, to us humans, we have major problems. There is war and hunger and violence and homelessness and prejudice and inequality and that's not including all of the monsters under our beds. But people like Diana are what makes this world keep spinning. We have hope and light because of them. Because of their unconditional love for others. But, unfortunately, these people are very rare. And the power inside Diana is eating away at her and changing her, destroying her. Yes, sometimes good people have to die. But this woman has so much potential to do so much good for a dark and terrified world. After surviving what was almost an apocalypse, we, as a race, are a hot mess. We need people like Diana to help us get back on our feet and remember who we are and how we'll carry on; together. You take her away, and you let that hope fade. You let that hope fade and this whole world is lost. It might take years, but it will happen. If these people, our human leaders and moral guides, continue to change and die, we'll all die, because it takes someone special to hold onto a beautiful perspective of an ugly world. But it takes someone magnificent to be able to show that to others, share that hope, spread that light, and change people. So, if you truly care about balance, even here on this tiny little planet, you'll help us preserve the people who keep the balance in humanity, starting with Diana."

I stood there, dumbstruck, just staring at my brother. I wasn't so much shocked that he felt this way as I was shocked that he would voice it in front of me, let alone in front of Death. I suddenly found that I understood the smiles Dean and Diana shared. She had always cared, but knew that Dean would take time to warm up to her, if he ever did. Once his perspective of her changed, the smiles were his way of telling her, and hers were her way of accepting a new relationship. Diana, the woman who showed me that I'm not a broken, worthless man, but a man filled with drive, heart, and potential, had touched my brother in a way neither of us had thought possible. She'd helped him to open his heart and mind once more to the possibility of love and happiness. And for that I knew I'd be eternally grateful.

Death finished chewing his burger, then wiped his fingers and mouth on a paper napkin and took a sip of his soda. He stared up at Dean and I with cold, dark, sunken eyes and a stony expression.

"I'll have to remind you that I do not owe you anything," he said after a few moments of silence. Dean and I nodded.

"No, sir, of course not," I said. "We don't ask this as repayment for anything. In fact, we'd be willing to pay you in any way we can that you'd see fit."

Death just continued to stare at us, sipping his soda until it was gone, then slowly collecting the trash from his meal and replacing it in the paper bag it had come in. He set the bag to the side, then folded his hands in his lap and continued to stare up at us.

"I appreciate your honesty, Dean," he finally said, breaking the tense silence. "But more than your honesty, I appreciate your perspective. You are stubborn, as you have mentioned, and often do not allow yourself to consider any other point of view than your own when you are emotionally involved in a situation. Listening to your argument, I can tell that you have thought this through. What may have begun as a rash decision made in the heat of a passionate moment has transformed. You have mulled this idea around in your brain for quite some time, I can tell, thinking about it in such a way that would allow you to see the situation from Sam's eyes, my eyes, and the eyes of your fellow man. You have certainly come far." He held up one long bony finger. "For that reason, as well as the significant circumstances in which these events have occurred, I shall help you transfer this power to another soul. You are not incorrect when you claim that Diana is an unusually important woman."

As he rose from his chair and calmly went about collecting his cane and old fashioned doctor's briefcase, he told us that he had much to do and would appear only when summoned at the proper time for the transformation to occur.

"Sir?" I called just as he was about to leave the empty diner. He turned back to stare at me. "What did you mean when you said Diana was an unusually important woman? Was it for any reason other than being a vessel for this power?"

Death blinked at me impassively, then said, "You shall not be the last to know," and walked out the door. Dean and I watched him gracefully slide into a white Cadillac and drive away, disappearing halfway down the street.

Thoughts? Questions? Criticisms?