Hey! I'm the worst updater in the WORLD, I swear. Omg... Don't hate me.

Working two jobs is super stressful, guess who's contemplating joining the Air Force, THIS GIRL RIGHT HERE. Agh. The struggle is real, the need for money is real... Sigh.

That being said, enjoy!

"Sam was in Heaven..." Dean asked, trying to comprehend what Castiel had just told him, "With your father... Who is also Chuck?"

"Yes..." Castiel said, still slightly disbelieving himself.

"Chuck is some prophet guy who wrote those weird books about all of you, right?" Buffy asked.

"There were very graphic sex scenes." Dawn commented, Buffy's eyes widened and she turned to her sister who ducked her head and turned back to where Willow was still slumped against Tara.

"Ew." Buffy visibly shuddered.

"Guys, not to interrupt, but I think we should get Willow back home." Tara said and they all three looked at her then and nodded in agreement, Castiel stepped to the witches' sides and they were gone in an instant, leaving Dean, Buffy, and Dawn on their own.

"Good thing we drove." Dean shrugged and they left the warehouse where Rowena had been hiding out.

"You don't think he's gonna do anything funny with that statue, do you?" Dawn asked, Buffy laughed but didn't respond, her own face contorted briefly.

"Nah, he may be a demon, but it's his mother. He's going to put her on display in his throne room and tell everyone that he did that to her. Should strike fear in the hearts of his idiot subjects for a day or so." Dean smiled as he climbed into the Impala, but the smile was short lived, he couldn't help thinking about his brother, especially when in the car.

As if sensing this unease in the hunter, Buffy reached out and squeezed his hand in her own lightly, a reassuring gesture. He looked at her and half shrugged, meeting her semi-smile with a sad one of his own before he started the car and drove away from the place where he'd been unable to save Sam.

"You know, when my mom died-" Buffy began, checking the rearview to see if Dawn had an adverse reaction to those words. She shifted in her seat and hugged her arms tighter across her chest, but didn't say anything, "I came up in hundreds of scenarios in my head about how I could have saved her. If I'd just gotten home a bit earlier, if I had been better at CPR, if I hadn't left the house at all that day... It was awful." She glanced sideways at Dean whose hands were clenched around the steering wheel, his knuckles white, "They trained me to be a savior, I spent all this time fighting forces that were in my control; they never taught me how to handle the ones that were beyond it."

"I appreciate the sentiment, I do..." Dean cleared his throat and huffed, "But he was killed by a witch that should have been dealt with a long time ago... I'm afraid this was completely in my control, and I failed."

"Dean-" She reached a hand out to touch his shoulder but he shrugged her off and grunted, the conversation was over. She checked once to make sure he wasn't crying, but it was clear that he hadn't reached the grieving portion just yet, he was still fueled by rage.

"Um... The light's not too bright just yet... Can we go let Spike out?" Buffy asked after the silence had become too deafening for her to endure it any longer.

"Let him out of what?" Dawn asked, neither one answered; Dean, however, made a sudden right turn and was headed for the vampire demon's crypt.

They barged into the crypt without saying a word. Spike was sitting on the floor, his legs crossed over one another in a pose that could only mean meditation or extreme discomfort. Whatever deep state he'd been in was disrupted by the noise and he looked up, his black eyes locking with Buffy's. Dawn yelped a bit and hid behind her sister until he blinked them away. Dean didn't say a word to him, he took out his gun and cocked the hammer, "Woah, wait, what are you doin?" Spike was suddenly up on his feet, his hands held out in front of him to shield him from any harm.

"Calm down, it won't hurt you." Dean scoffed.

"It'll still hurt." Spike blinked, Dean sighed and made a point of aiming the gun dramatically at the ceiling. He shot a hole into the trap and Spike was immediately able to get out of it, "Oh, that's... Nifty." He sniffed as he stared up at the broken trap.

"No, you can't shoot it yourself to get free." Dean sighed as he turned his back on the peroxide abusing creature of the night and made his way out of the crypt. They all followed and Spike was muttering something about nothing making sense in the Winchester's universe.

Castiel's fingers had seemingly no effect on the unconscious witch. Tara sat by their bed and held onto Willow's hand, occasionally placing a light kiss on the soft skin there.

"I don't understand-" Castiel grunted, frustrated, "I should be able to heal her!"

"Maybe Rowena did something?" Tara suggested, running a hand over Willow's forehead and then down through her red locks, "Woah!" She jumped back, pulling her hand from where it just was. Castiel stared at it, incredulous.

"Impossible." He muttered just as the front door of the house slammed shut and there were voices in the foyer.

"Cas!?" Dean shouted.

"We're in here!" He replied, though he knew he could just pop downstairs to tell them where they were, he enjoyed the domestic feeling of shouting through a house to communicate something simple.

Castiel heard Tara stifle a noise behind him and he turned, she was looking at him with a sort of expression he wasn't familiar with, "What?" He asked, his head tilted in it's old fashion.

"Nothing, it's just... You seem so... When you did that I mean, and the look on your face, the pure joy you got out of it... It was very human." Tara sighed and then went back to paying attention to her girlfriend.

"I was human once." Castiel said and couldn't help the grin that broke onto his face when he saw Dean come up the stairs, the gang in tow. They'd obviously met up with Anya and Xander in front of the house, and they'd stopped to retrieve Spike, which was interesting to the angel. He still didn't quite know what to make of his true face. There were two there, the one of the vampire and the one of the demon, they'd morphed into one extremely unpleasant being to look at. Castiel was glad he was the only one who could see it.

"I'm just sayin, the Rudy hobbit gets the best speech Tower's, hands down, it's the best speech in any of the movies." Dean said to Xander, Castiel was thankful for the knowledge Metatron had given to him, or he wouldn't have understood what their conversation was about.

"You're saying his speech about stories is better than Aragorn's motivational speech in Return?" Xander asked, obviously offended. Dean shrugged and tilted his head, smiling. Xander looked extremely affronted, though he had a hint of a smile on his face, until he looked at Willow, "Woah, what the hell?"

Castiel looked back at the unconscious witch to find that the few strands that had changed before had now turned into a sizable chunk. On one side of her head, her hair was slipping from a fiery red into a deep black.

It's short, I know! I'm so sorry! But hey! CLIFFHANGERS AND STUFF! YAY!