The sound of hostilities had long subsided when Castiel looked down to the earth again. As he stormed off of the battlefield, he made no move to clean off the blood that stained his front, his neck, his face, hands, and sword alike; the crimson splatters stood stark against his pale skin and the white shirt of Jimmy's that he'd never bothered changing. Shoulders hunched and fingers clenched on his blade's hilt, Castiel ascended a clump of cumulonimbus clouds, up to the place where Michael had sat as supreme archangel — and Castiel knew now that his Father had seen fit to change him, no doubt to give him the power of authority in Heaven. In the silence, he closed his eyes and extended his wings; for the first time, he truly felt the presence of eight of them, where he'd had only two before. The new ones creaked, the joints still too accustomed to nonexistence to be particularly useful. Castiel shook them out, sending loose feathers tumbling to the ground.

Idly, he let his eyes trail after one as it plummeted. Over and over it turned, showing first one long, white side, then the other, lazily drifting down toward the modest little house where Castiel had left Dean on his own. Although Castiel tried to tell himself not to look, that Dean had made his choices, that the life he wanted did not include the angel who had given up everything for him and that the only reasonable option was to leave Dean to it, he couldn't stave off the temptation. The feather landed in the backyard, at Ben Braeden's feet, distracting him from everything else; he looked around and wandered to a nearby thicket of trees, calling out for the birds who might have lost something. Inside, however, Dean clenched his fingers around another bottle of beer. He brooded; Castiel could hear the need and the ruminations from his post. Lisa entered the kitchen; they raised their voices. Castiel turned away.

Again, for the first time in too long, he knew what he needed to do. After so long without it, certainty slipped onto him like an old sweater that didn't fit right anymore. But he knew what he needed to do.

Consciousness is a funny thing, for angels. Technically speaking, as beings comprised entirely of Grace, they can't die in the same way that humans can. Instead, when they should perish, they end up in a realm crafted specifically to hold them until such time as someone resurrects them, or they decide to permanently remove their essence from existence. This place, a Limbo between the different layers of Heaven, has very little of note — whiteness everywhere, without adornment or props or a stable sense of the movement of time, and the only companions who ever come in are the other angels. Most of them choose to die fairly quickly, figuring that, had their Father's Will been different, they would never have come here.

Only two angels refused to give up the hope of living again, and by the time Castiel descended the stairs toward them, the first living angel to enter Limbo in millennia, they had all but run out of ways to make each other miserable.

Zachariah had shown up in Limbo first, immediately after Dean had killed him, and when the littlest archangel popped into what he'd come to consider his space, he couldn't just ignore it: "Well, well, well — I guess running away wasn't going to keep you from dying like a real angel."

"Shut your fat cake-hole," Gabriel had snapped. "At least I didn't get iced by Thing One — I mean, Dean? Seriously, Zach? He's practically a Neanderthal, and dumber than a box of rocks. How'd he manage to get your guard down like that — point out an unmarried, interracial gay couple desecrating a church and giving out free abortions?"

"You should show me some respect." Anger had never been a foreign concept to Zachariah, but feeling actual rage bubble up instead of righteous indignation left him feeling so... flawed. For Gabriel, he'd decided, though — for Gabriel, he could make an exception. "I stayed in my place. I fought. You're what? Some piss-poor, cowardly excuse of an archangel, who joined up with the Pagans because his brothers couldn't decide who got the ice cream first?"

"You shut up about my brothers, you selfish, arrogant, sanctimonious dick."

And so on. And so on. And so on. Ad nauseam — Gabriel and Zachariah carried on for long enough that, even if they had been able to feel time moving around them, the two of them would have lost count of how many days had passed. After a while, Gabriel gave up on insults and took to fooling around with reality and Zachariah's perception of it. Here, he'd put up the illusion of a perfect little servant/receptionist, just like Zach had always wanted, and take it away just as Zachariah had gotten used to the idea of having someone do his bidding for him once again. There, he'd toss up images of Sam's, Dean's, and Castiel's bloody corpses, only to have them stand again and terrorize the senior paper-pusher.

Zachariah knew that, for the most part, he was powerless to actually fight back against an archangel (even one as pathetic as Gabriel). So, instead, he stuck to what he knew best: "So, tell me really. You were just pulling that Mystery Spot gag with Sam so you could sleep with him repeatedly and no one would know the difference, right?"

For that jab, Gabriel dropped onto Zach's head the hand-crafted appearance of a road-killed raccoon that had been out in the summer sun for far too long.

Sometimes, they tried to just ignore each other, but the silence, they found, was even worse than the company they'd gotten stuck with. As soon as it wandered in and settled down, it started gnawing at their nerves, making them twitch. Just a bit at first, but eventually, one or the other either said something or collapsed in convulsions on the floor, and trying to wait until the other seized up inevitably ended in the attempted patient one falling over first. When the battle for Heaven happened, several of their brothers and sisters joined them — but none of them hung around for long before they disappeared with a series of little pops.

On the day they were to be freed from Limbo, Gabriel had given up on breaking the other angel's spirit and, instead, turned to searching for a way to get out of this crap-hole. He glanced up the wall of clouds, staring into a fathomless white abyss, and with a pensive hum, he made a set of foot-holds materialize on it. Gabriel smirked, and rubbed his hands together in preparation. With a self-satisfied huff, Gabriel started climbing. Looking up at his companion (for, regrettably, Zachariah couldn't think of a better term for Gabriel, at this point), Zachariah sighed. "That's not going to work," he pointed out — and reasonably so as, not five seconds later, Gabriel crashed back into the floor. "I told you so."

Sitting up and facing his brother, Gabriel glared and wrinkled his nose as though he'd caught a whiff of a real sun-baked road-kill raccoon. "Well excuse me for not just sitting on my ass like you, Negative Nancy."

Optimism had long since proven its unreliability, in Zachariah's experience. As he looked into the archangel's eyes, a thought occurred: "They're just going to forget us here, you know. It's either die, or be stuck with each other. For eternity."

Gabriel paused, and considered this for a moment. "Given that choice, I'd say that suicide almost sounded worth it. …But seriously, Zach. You're not getting rid of me thateasily."

Zachariah shrugged. "It's not like we had to try that hard before you ran off to Scandinavia." Rather than respond to that, and despite the now familiar sensation of needing to make mischief right the fuck now, Gabriel allowed the silence to worm its way in between them; Zachariah broke it before either of them could have a fit. "…So what do we do with each other for the rest of time, Gabriel? I mean… I don't like you. You don't like me. And I don't think anyone else is going to be dying very soon."

This needed a moment's actual thought, but Gabriel concluded: "Well, I guess we could make out."

Sexuality, in Zachariah's estimation, had always seemed so base, so… human — and, as it was a human endeavor, he wanted to stay as far away from it as he possibly could. Before he had the chance to think about the offer, Zachariah found Gabriel straddling his lap and kissing him. It was new — not bad, especially, but the wet feeling of their mouths colliding seemed so odd. Cooperating, however, was most likely the better option, and yielding to the warmth between them, Zachariah kissed back, moving his lips against Gabriel's and trying not to think about it too much when Gabriel's tongue ran along his own.

Castiel had expected to find many things in Limbo, but the sight of two of his brothers enmeshed in each other like this had not entered his mind at all. The hungry way that Gabriel went after Zachariah's mouth looked too much reminiscent of Dean — Castiel cleared his throat without regard for how his brothers felt. They startled, and separated; Zachariah flung Gabriel backwards off of his chest, and Gabriel scuttled even further away from him. Both of them blushed scarlet.

"H-hey, bro," Gabriel stammered. "I… didn't you go and pull out some serious, self-sacrificing badass shit in Van Nuys?"

Castiel's expression did not change. "Yes."

"So what are you doing—"

"The two of you," Castiel explained, "are coming with me." With his mind alone, he moved the two of them to within an arm's reach. Frowning, he set his hands on the tops of their heads. "I have very important work for you."

"Come on, Sam."

The palace of Pandemonium stood at the center of a blighted field, a black monument right in the middle of Hell. Darkness surrounded it, so pitch-dark that everything else looked light. Inside it, on an onyx throne, sat Sam Winchester, who hadn't stopped looking pale since he'd shown up here; at his left-hand sat Bela Talbot, resting on the chair's arm and setting her head on his shoulder. Crowley — the one who had, with some crafty magic, separated Sam from Lucifer in the first place — stood off to the right. Neither of them wore particularly pleased expressions.

Gabriel appeared on the field with a scowl and a flutter of wings. He gave the place a once over and thought of ten good reasons why he should have just gone back to Heaven and told Castiel to go suck Dean's cock. Why, of all the things, did his first duty upon having his life restored to him have to involve raising Sam Winchester from Hell? Dry, blasted dirt crumbled under his feet as he approached Pandemonium, and, against all of his expectations, no demons showed up to try and make his life even more like Hell that being in the Hot Box already made it. Gabriel sighed, and thought a quick Thanks, Dad; if He'd gotten nothing else right, then at least he'd made this one job a little easier.

Unfortunately for Gabriel, his left shoulder and three of his wings still ached from the last time he'd told Castiel to do anything involving Dean's cock, and if the choice came down to having his wings torched off as Castiel had threatened or running this inane errand, Gabriel had to go with the path that didn't end with him in outrageous pain.

As far as appearances went, Bela's hadn't changed too terribly much during her eons in Hell. From far enough away, her skin looked just as smooth, but up close, the twisted map of scars revealed itself. Golden-brown hair still fell to the middle of her back, but the knots and twists to it looked serpentine; an unexpected sympathy lurked under her glowing red eyes. Crowley had knotted skin the color of a sun-bleached bone, the same red eyes, and a mess of tangled black hair. With a pensive sigh, Bela laid her hand on Sam's wrist.

"It's not all that bad down here, is it?" she asked softly. "We are trying to make you comfortable."

"Yeah, why is that, exactly?" Sam didn't mean to snap at her; even if she'd tried to kill him before, that was long past where they were now, and she wasn't directly responsible for him being in Hell. Besides, she was right: so far, no one had chained him to the rack, or made him watch some soul being tortured. The worst thing he'd encountered had been Crowley's pet Hell-hound, who mostly disconcerted Sam by virtue of the fact that he looked like an approximately horse-sized Rottweiler. Even so, Sam's stormy expression showed her no friendliness. "If I wanted to, I could waste all of you."

"And what would that get you, exactly?" Crowley asked with the aggrieved sigh of someone who had been thrust once more into a conversation he'd attempted to beat to death already. "We need our leader, Sam — preferably one who's not going to run around trying to raise Lucifer from his cage again like those God-forsaken morons, Lilith and Azazel."

"And Ruby," Bela chimed in, glancing up at her boss from Sam's shoulder. "And Alastair."

Sam's frown deepened; his glare steeled; his lips curled into a tight frown. "I told you not to bring up Ruby."

"Yes, we know," Crowley drawled. "The mean, mean demon gave you some of the best sex of your young life, used you to break Lucifer out, and got you addicted to her delicious blood in the process — can we just let the past go already?"

Sam turned his eyes to Crowley and sighed. "Not really. I'd say it's kind of a big reason why I'm not really jumping at the bit to lead you guys."

Warding magic around the palace made it so that, within a certain distance, Gabriel could only fly so high, effectively ending his attempts at an aerial assault with one archangel falling on his ass. As far as he could see, the choices for getting into Pandemonium came down to two options: trying to scale the cool, slick walls (which, as part of Hell and made from the darkness and chaos, were beyond his ability to manipulate) and tipping off the two guards by the gate. He huffed and glanced skyward, trying to think of all the choice words he could give his Father, the next time he got a face-to-face. So much for this being easy.

Rolling his eyes, he strolled right up to the black-eyed sons of bitches who stood between him and his mark. "Hey, boys," he said. "Whose toes do you have to suck to get an audience with King Sammy?"

"Sam, honestly," Crowley said, keeping his tone even as he sat on the throne's right arm. "We can all agree that this isn't an ideal situation — Bela, darling, would you call this anything even remotely resembling an ideal situation?" Bela shook her head and murmured a no. "But what do we do with less-than-ideal situations? …We make the best out of them."

"Well, excuse me for not seeing how I'm supposed to make the best out of being your leader." Sam wished, desperately, that he had died before he'd come down here. For all his previous deaths hadn't lasted long enough for him to really get a feel for what it was like, not having to deal with the way his lungs twisted right now would have, he thought, improved the situation considerably.

"We understand you're upset," Bela told him, wrapping her fingers in with his. "But it is for the best, you know. We want to take Hell in a different direction. No more Apocalypse business, just your standard deals. The occasional possession or two. Working with the hunters to control other monster populations—"

The sound of flapping wings and the feeling of plummeting onto the seat cut Bela off; she and Crowley stared at the doorway, at the little figure who now had Sam in his arms. Gabriel only smirked. "You guys need some better guards. It's like those boys have never seen an archangel before."

Gabriel dropped Sam on the street outside of Lisa Braeden's house, just as she, Dean, and Ben were sitting down to dinner. Briefly, he considered hanging around to answer questions — where am I now, what did you do to me, what's going to happen to Dean, whatever else was kicking around Sam's enormous Cro-Magnon skull — but a far off flash of lightning served as a warning. In the roll of thunder, he could practically hear Castiel telling him to hurry up and get back home. As he spread his wings and flew back up to Heaven, Gabriel wondered what his little brother had gone and dreamt up this time.

"You have got to be kidding me."

Brow knotted and expression grave, Castiel looked up from the papers he'd set himself about organising. "No, Gabriel. I am not kidding you."

Gabriel's shoulders slumped, and he put his hands on his hips. "You know, little brother? Last I checked, I was the archangel between the two of us, and you can, 'Our Father gave me a special mission, blah, blah, blah' me all you want, but you know what? ...I am nobody's bitch. Not yours, not Dad's, not anybody's."

Something seemed to burn behind Castiel's blue eyes, but he said nothing in response.

"I just got back from Hell, Cas," Gabriel continued, snapping like a viper at a human's ankle. "You wanted Sam Winchester raised, so I went and I raised him, but you cannot make me do this."

The silence smoldered between them — and provided a long enough distraction for Castiel to pin Gabriel to the wall. "You're the angel of annunciation, Gabriel," he hissed. Tightening his hold on the archangel's arms, Castiel pushed him harder into the cold surface. "Now go announce."

"Okay, okay! Fine!" Gabriel heaved a sigh of relief as Castiel finally let him go. "…Jeez, bro. I get it that Dean broke your heart, but can't you just go drink the pain away like everybody else?"

Castiel's expression darkened. "I'm fine. Get going."

Becky Rosen's heart hadn't stopped racing since she'd looked at the pregnancy test results, though it had calmed down some. It made sense, she guessed, in that it explained why her boobs hurt and why her she was Late-late, but… she and Chuck hadn't… and she hadn't been with anybody else… Becky paled and looked around her tiny mess of a home, left to her in Chuck's will after he'd mysteriously disappeared and died three weeks previously, along with the money he was supposed to get for publishing all theSupernatural books that were still on his hard drive. She couldn't raise a baby here. She couldn't raise a baby anywhere, not unless she moved back in with her parents, and she couldn't do that…

Pale and trembling, hugging herself around the middle, Becky sat down on the ratty sofa. In her hip pocket, she had a Post-It note with the number of a Planned Parenthood location a few towns over — but what would they say when she showed up there and insisted that she'd never had sex, because she hadn't? She didn't notice the sound of rustling feathers, or the presence of someone else sitting next to her until he said, "Hey, Becky."

Her eyes doubled in size and she scooted down the sofa. "Who… who are you?" she spluttered. "Where did you come from? What are you doing here? …Are you going to rape me?"

"Oh, please," Gabriel huffed, rolling his eyes. "Sweetheart, I'm not interested in you like that. This visit is more like… How about we just call it family business and have that be that."

Wrinkling her nose like an irritated kitten and curling her lips as though deep in thought, Becky shot him a suspicious look. "Are you a demon? …How did you get past the wards? Mister Singer did those himself and…" Gabriel spread his wings; Becky stared up at them in awe. She gaped in silence for a minute before whispering, "Oh my God, you're an angel. …Do you know Castiel? …Is it true that he's in love with Dean or did Chuck make that up, because I've kind of wondered how much of the story he embellished a little and how much—"

"I'm not here to talk to you about Castiel or Dean, okay?" Gabriel held a hand up to keep Becky from interrupting him in return; his expression serious, he pointed at her stomach. "That baby inside you? …It's Chuck's baby — well. Not Chuck's baby, more God's baby. But you met my Dad while He was down here as Chuck, so… for all intents and purposes, you're having Chuck's baby."

"But he and I never—"

"I know. You're a virgin." Gabriel cocked his head and smirked. "This isn't the first time I've had to make this visit." Becky shivered, looking at the floor between her knees and hugging herself tighter; she didn't register Gabriel reaching into her pocket for the Planned Parenthood number until he held it up. "You won't be needing this," he explained. "Your baby's got a world of work ahead of her."

In a flurry of beating wings, Gabriel left her on the sofa. Becky sat there in silence for a moment, before emitting a high-pitched whine. What was she going to do? She couldn't do this by herself… She went to the desk and dug Chuck's cellphone out of the top drawer. Her lips quivered as she plugged it into the charger. As soon as it turned on, she dialled the number of the person she knew who had the best chance of helping.

"…Hello?" he hazarded. Between the relief of hearing him and the stress of everything else, her eyes started misting over with tears.

"Sam?" She hated how her voice sounded right now, so incompetent and anxious. She just wanted this to not be happening. "It's Becky…"

From the Desk of Castiel, Archangel.

3rd Tammuz, 5770 (15th June, 2010 by mortal "civil" reckoning).

Brothers and Sisters,

Today, we celebrate two of the great miracles that Our Father gave to human beings as a reward for their faith in him: the flowering of Aaron's staff to show his right to the high priesthood of Israel, and the stopping of the sun and moon by Joshua, Moses's student and not our heavenly brother. I believe that these stories share an important lesson about the nature of faith and its proper handling, one that many of us need to learn again. Put briefly: faith uplifts and it brings us closer to our Creator, for whose faith is greater than the Lord's? Who else has believed so steadfastly that all would transpire as it should?

However, as some of you have heard me say before, our plight during these past few years does call our policies of faith into question. I do not intend, brothers and sisters, to tell you not to put your trust in Our Father and in His Ineffable Plan; on the contrary, if you are to have faith in anything, I would have you put it in Him first, humanity second, and His Plan third. (Humanity ranks above The Plan because, being Ineffable, the Plan cannot be fully understood by our limited capacities and humans often seem to leave it to rot while actually furthering it.) The problem is that many of us, myself included, have histories of putting too much faith into our self-declared "betters," who only purport to be following Our Father's plan.

In order to work on repairing this, the Council of Elder Angels and I have drafted the Heavenly Independent Thought Act, which you can find attached to this notice. This new Act opens up the ability for angels to question the directives given to them by other angels without the fear of retribution. In fact, you are now encouraged to question your orders and the choices made by those above you in the hierarchy, so that everyone understands what we mean to accomplish with everything. The only directive to which this does not apply is the one concerning He Who Must Not Be Named and what will happen to anyone who names him in my presence.

We will begin implementing this new policy immediately and while I welcome you to question my decision, please remember that, in doing so, you are following it rather than furthering your quest to reestablish the old order. Remember, my kindred: change is a good thing.

May this missive find you at peace and in active service of Our Lord.

Your brother and leader,

Castiel (as dictated to his chief secretary, Zachariah).

Zachariah looked up from the missive he'd just taken down and furrowed his brow. Castiel glanced back at him, unruffled and as if to ask what he found so difficult to understand about, 'Do not hesitate in sending this out.' For several minutes, they said nothing, Castiel reviewed once more the full version of the Heavenly Independent Thought Act, and, despite his orders, Zachariah did not send out the missive. Briefly, it occurred to him that this new act might not have worked out too terribly for him.

"You can't be serious, Castiel," he finally said, slouching on his desk and holding up the memorandum.

His — and it still made Zachariah's stomach churn to refer to him as such — superior shrugged and nodded. "I am," Castiel confirmed.

"We're going to have anarchy within a week — within a day! Come on, Castiel: I know that you got your head turned around during your time on Earth, and that your human charges went and distracted you — I still remember having to get your head back on straight after that unfortunate business with Lilith in Kripke's Hollow… But we've had the chain of command established for centuries and with good reason: it works. It keeps everyone organized, and it keeps business moving. I mean, really… The Dean Winchester Model doesn't work even half the time…"

Castiel straightened, and something dark crossed his face. "What was that?" he asked, his voice a low rumble.

"I'm just saying," Zachariah sighed. "If Dean Winchester was up here, trying to run things like this—"

Zachariah did not get to finish that sentence. Instead, Castiel lunged at him over the desk and knocked him to the floor. He pinned Zachariah's shoulders and glared at him. "What is the one rule you are not allowed to question?" he growled.

Zachariah winced as Castiel tightened his hold on his arms. Forcing himself to open his eyes, he answered, "…'Don't mention Dean Winchester'?"

"Good," Castiel huffed. In a flurry of wings, he was on his feet, straightening himself up. "I'm going to my meeting with the Cherubim. Get that missive out."

Sitting up, Zachariah nodded, but as he watched Castiel walk out of the office, he couldn't help muttering, "Son of a bitch."