Bobby Singer's Salvage Yard became the most ragtag hunters' retreat the world had ever seen. Ellen had arrived first, followed by Dean and Jo. The elder Harvelle had pulled her daughter aside for a tongue-lashing while Dean had greeted Bobby with his heart in his throat; he had forgotten he would see that wheelchair again. That was one way 2009 had been a hell of a lot worse than a few years down the road. The two men had gone with a handshake, not a hug, but they had both held on a few seconds too long.
Not a day and a half after Dean and the Harvelles arrived, Sam showed up, looking more like a beaten puppy than any man nearly six-and-a-half-feet tall should. It was shocking how much younger he looked in 2009 than the recent memory, so much less physically broken than the man whose own head had cracked. When Dean looked away, his mind kept resetting to that stored image of his brother, red-rimmed eyes and early wrinkles. Then when he looked again and saw what was actually in front of him, Sam seemed not a bit older than when he had walked out to go to Stanford, with that same hang-dog fear of rejection on his face.
Dean pulled him in and hugged him a little too long too, and the surprise kicking up on Sam's face got him right in the chest too. Of course, Dean had pulled out all his usual jokes and snarks for the first couple days at Bobby's, but then it had been time to head to town for groceries.
"You want to drive?" Dean had tossed him the keys. Sam had caught them in his left hand, looked up so full of gratitude it made your teeth hurt, and then taken them into town. Dean hadn't had to apologize any further than that, which worked just fine for him. By the time they got back from town, Rufus had shown up with a suitcase and a case of Johnnie Walker.
"You know you dumb sons of bitches can't stop this thing without me," he had groused and marched up to take over the good guest room where the Winchesters had slept since they were kids.
From there, the days moved in an odd rhythm of research, omen-tracking, and hoping. Sometimes Castiel came with news, sometimes Ellen and Jo loaded up and went to work a case, sometimes Sam and Dean chased down a lead on a Horseman that ended up to be nothing more than demons, and sometimes a day passed where nothing at all happened.
Six adults, all independent and crotchety as hell, shared two bathrooms, three bedrooms, and three kitchen chairs. Rufus and Ellen maintained camp in the good room with two beds; Rufus staked out his claim with an "age before beauty" remark that earned a chuckle from Jo. Bobby kept his room on the first floor though it ground his gears to do it, but it was the only one with wheelchair access. Still he groused his way to bed later than any of them most nights, and Dean could have sworn he could hear the man's guilt sloshing around inside of him like whiskey in a barrel.
Sam had suggested sleeping in the panic room since they were flat out of space, and Dean had squashed that idea so fast that everyone's heads had spun to look at him.
"We might need it for something, and we don't need it full of Sam's hair products in the meantime," he had justified with a smirk. Really, he just could not imagine what it would do to Sam's pysche to sleep in there right now. He already saw himself as some sort of demonic pariah, skirting around the others and working harder and longer than he needed to every day.
So Jo got the living room couch, and Sam and Dean got the floor, even though Dean had joked that chivalry should be dead because she was the youngest and would survive the knotty hardwood better than any of them. Somehow Dean ended up sleeping in between her and Sam, and when he tossed and turned his way through the night, he never knew how he would wake up. For years, he had slept with his arm tossed out in Sam's direction, a throwback habit from childhood where little brother had needed him often, but some mornings now he woke up with one arm towards Sam and his whole body cocked towards Jo. It just depended who had suffered worse Hell in his nightmares that night.
The night that Lucifer came to Sam in his sleep and told him the truth about being his vessel, Sam had woken Dean up, shaking him alert. In a hushed whisper, so as not to wake Jo, Sam had shakily revealed the information, and he had bent over, head on his hands. Dean had held tight onto his shoulder, whispering reassurances and reminding himself again that he could not risk time paradox by revealing anything to Sam. He just needed to do his job and do it right.
Every morning, he woke with fresh resolve to save them all. The words "I have to save them" became his mantra, and he repeated them within his thoughts and digested them daily along with his eggs, cheeseburgers, and beer.
Jo killed him. Between the nightmares and the too-good dreams, the smiles she snuck out of him without even meaning it, and her stubbornness that made him want to throttle her, she had him so on edge that he could distinguish her breathing from a room away. Every time she and Ellen walked out that door to work a case, he had to remind himself a hundred times that she had been hunting for years without him now and that the only time she had ever turned up dead had been the second time she went hunting with him. That didn't stop him from slamming doors a little too hard until she got back though. When she came back from one hunt driving her piece of shit car, he groused for an extra day on principle.
He ate breakfast beside her most days, had the occasional off-topic conversation where he liked her a little more than he had before they talked, and tried to pretend that the affection he saw in her eyes was a projection not a reflection.
The days became weeks, and the cool fall faded into bitter South Dakota winter. The first snowfall blanketed the ground the day before Castiel showed up with news about the Trickster. Dean had been out shoveling the Impala out and cussing up and down about Frosty the Snowman, dick snow angels, and white shit falling from the sky. He freakin' hated winter.
"You keep talking to yourself, and I'm going to think you're crazy." Jo spoke as she approached, carrying her own shovel in gloved hands. Dean turned to look at her, prepared to send her back inside, but instead raised an eyebrow at her outfit. Rufus's stocking cap perched on her waves, Dean's other coat layered over her usual attire, and plastic grocery bags stuck out of the top of her boots.
"Coming from the blonde wearing bags in her shoes? I'll take my chances. Why are you wearing my coat?"
"Because it was hanging by the hook on my way out the door." She walked past him and started to shovel out her car. "I knew you wouldn't care."
She was right. If anything, he liked the sight of her in his jacket on some primal level, the same level that made boys want to leave hickeys all over their girlfriends and men want to spread their seed. He kept working, and as he started to sweat, he took off his black beanie and tucked it in his pocket. When he lifted his eyes back up, he saw Castiel in front of him, so close he could smell that unique tang of salt, freshness, and nothing at all. Dean would never forget the first time Cas stood to close to him, and he caught a whiff of that distinctly inhuman smell. If the wings hadn't made his angelhood obvious, the smell gave away that he was no human.
"Dean," Cas used his name as a greeting, then tilted his head over to look at Jo. "Hello Jo."
"Hey Cas. Any word on anything?" Jo leaned sideways against her shovel as she looked at him.
"There are many words on everything," Cas responded, and Dean tried not to roll his eyes so far into his head that they got stuck. In a hundred little ways, he struggled daily with not revealing that he was from a future he hoped no longer existed, but in its own petty way, having rewound Cas to a less human-adjacent state was one of the worst.
"She wants to know if you've found anything about the Horsemen or your missing brother."
"Yes. That is why I am here. I may have located Gabriel. I believe he has been posing as a trickster and that you have met him before."
"The Trickster?" Dean did not think of himself as a particularly good actor, so his surprised voice lacked a little oomph. From the corner of his eye, he saw Jo looking at him oddly. "Like the douchebag who's tried to kill us a couple times?"
"Yes." Castiel nodded. "He is in Chicago. Doing this."
Cas extended his hand and in it appeared a shiny, folded piece of paper. Dean accepted it only to see a playbill for Cats, the Broadway musical. He thumbed it open, scanning, until he saw Gabriel's smug face beside the name Macavity.
"You've got to be freakin' kidding me," Dean muttered. He turned and handed the playbill to Jo, pointing to the culprit. "That's the Trickster."
"You were killed over a hundred times by a guy who is playing a cat on Broadway?"
"A demi-god who it turns out may be an archangel, so you can save your judgment," Dean corrected. He watched her look at the playbill, a pensive expression taking form, and he could practically see her brain working. She had to be crafting her argument as to why she should be allowed to tag along on a trip to Chicago.
"We need to find out if this Trickster is indeed the archangel Gabriel," Cas said.
"So we're going to Chicago." Jo jutted her chin out as she said the words. Dean resisted the urge to smile. She had gone with the bold choice of stating her accompaniment as fact. The stubborn set of her jaw matched the steel in her eyes. His blood kicked a little faster through his veins as he thought of the argument he could get out of her right now, the way he could wind her up and get color in her cheeks and sparks flying in the air between them.
For once, though, there was no need to even have the argument. Of all the dangers he did not want her facing, he had the luxury of knowing Gabriel was not one of them. He remembered how the archangel had tried to help them, stubbornly believing in family even as he prepared to kill his own brother. Dean was not worried about Gabriel hurting Jo.
"We?" Dean pretended to consider it.
"Yes, Dean Winchester. We. I'll go tell Sam." She pushed her shovel into Castiel's hands and marched away before Dean could even tell her he was allowing her to join them.
"You don't want her to come," Cas said it as fact. "I could snow the car back in and tell her I can only transport humans who are angelic vessels."
Dean leaned on his shovel and looked over at Cas, trying not to feel too nostalgic over these moments of friendship and insight. He wanted to say You and I are going to be really great friends, Cas. Like family. This time, I'm going to keep you from betraying me. Instead he kept eye contact as long as was comfortable and then shook his head.
"Nah. She can come along. She's not a kid." Dean turned to go inside. "C'mon. Let's go make a plan."
With holy oil in a mason jar, courtesy of Bobby Singer, three humans and an angel entered the Cadillac Palace Theater. Sam had bought Meet and Greet tickets for the Cats cast from a guy for about $200 a piece above face value to get them in here. The ten hour drive in the Impala had been surprisingly pleasant; Cas had chosen not to partake, Sam had stretched out in the backseat where his knees weren't pressed against the dashboard, and Jo had sung along to the radio from the passenger seat. A few times she had touched his arm, casually getting his attention, and once he had needed her to read a street sign and had reached over to touch her knee, jostling her to catch her focus.
Having Sam as shotgun came so naturally to him that he found himself startled every time he glanced over and saw her over there. Either she was getting prettier, or he was getting softer as the days passed and he let himself believe he might be able to stop seeing her death in his dreams.
They had all stopped to change in a rest stop bathroom halfway through the trip, the men putting on their suits and Jo putting on some sort of black dress. She had pulled her hair up into a knot at the back of her neck. Dean wasn't sure he liked the serious, adult look it gave her, but he resisted the temptation to tug it back down into haphazard waves. Styx served as the soundtrack for the rest of the drive. Even Sam mumbled out a little singing along on "Renegade."
Once inside the theater, Jo slipped into the long line for the women's bathroom while Castiel searched the town for evidence of demons. Dean looked over at Sam as they stood together in the lobby. Theatergoers mulled around them, but against the wall, they were alone in a sea of people.
"How you feeling, Sammy?"
"Better all the time. I'm still scared of what I could do, but I'm feeling stronger. I won't say yes to the Devil, Dean. I know you worry about it."
Dean shook his head, though a swell of pride grew in his chest. Sam wouldn't have to say yes to Lucifer this time, but if he had had to, Dean knew his little brother would kick that overgrown tree topper's ass again.
"I trust you." He let the weight of the words fall between them, let them make an impact and be felt, and then moved on quickly before either of them could be embarrassed. "How long is Jo going to take in the bathroom?"
Sam had visibly relaxed under Dean's affirmation. "I don't know. It was a pretty long line. What's going on there anyway?"
"Nothing." Dean bristled, irritated with himself that he wasn't able to keep whatever bubbled under the surface from being visible.
"Whatever. Pretty sure it's something."
"You just know I've got all the moves with the ladies," Dean replied, shooting his brother a cocky grin. He felt Jo's approach on his other side before he could turn and knew she had heard. He turned to see her twinkling behind him.
"Were you the one putting on the moves in that movie theater? I could have sworn I was putting them on you…" Her open-mouthed smile lit up her whole face as she teased him, and he glanced over to check his brother's expression. Sam looked amused as hell.
"First rule of the movie theater: don't talk about the movie theater," Dean replied.
"Second rule of the movie theater: don't talk about the movie theater," Jo countered.
"You've got Fight Club references. Something is definitely going on between you two." Sam looked from one to the other.
"Nothing's going on between us," Jo corrected, and Dean threw an admiring glance her way. She could dole out the Winchester snark and zing as well as a native.
"Right. Let's get to…" In the middle of Dean's sentence, the room around him froze completely. Jo's face had paused in an awful in-between as her mouth transitioned from smile to neutral. Around him people stood mid-stride in impossible poses. Sam, however, turned his head from side to side. Alone, the two Winchesters stood amidst the toy shelf stillness.
"What the hell?" Dean's skin prickled.
"I don't know." Sam sounded how Dean felt.
Suddenly the staccato sound of clapping filled the air. Lucifer - clothed in his familiar vessel - stepped through the entryway of the theater itself. He paused at a frozen woman, carrying a little boy, and lifted up a lock of her hair. He twirled it around his fingers, released it strand by strand to fan back down, and then continued his approach.
"Hello Sam Winchester." Lucifer did not smile as he spoke, but his voice pitched gently. He sounded almost warm, almost friendly, in the way that predators did when they wanted children to follow them away.
"Lucifer." Sam lost the word as an exhalation of shaky breath.
"And Dean Winchester." He tilted his head to look at Dean. "What a pleasure. My brother's vessel and my own, the two hardest-to-find humans on Earth, walk into the same theater where I am seeking something else very important to me. The coincidence does not seem possible."
Dean knew he had faced down Lucifer before, more than once, but this time, the fear of being discovered lent a new terror to the graceful devil who stood calmly before them. He could feel his brain churning over with insults - "What do you want, you flying assmonkey?" - but his mouth would not move. Fear became paralysis. He clenched the muscles of body as if Ma'at's magic could drift out to Lucifer and alert him to Dean's unnatural presence.
Sam spoke up. "You're not going to hurt us. You need us. And I'm not going to say yes. And he's not going to say yes. So what do you want?"
Lucifer half-smiled.
"I admire you, Sam. You're underappreciated. You've been through so much, always trying to help, always walking a step behind your brother and taking orders, and yet when you try to help, try to do something on your own, you get blasted by…" He lifted his hands palm-up to the cosmos. "Everybody. You want to stop me, and I know you won't, but I'm willing to let you find that out on your own. I'm not here for you."
He took a step closer. "I'm certainly not here for your brother, the obedient brawn of your father's outfit. He's not worth addressing. No, I'm here for the same reason you are."
Lucifer stopped and let the weight of silence fall over them. Neither Sam nor Dean knew words to form. The seconds dragged.
"I could stop their breathing, brother. All these little lemmings are poised on the edge of a cliff, waiting on you to either save or damn them."
Dean realized Lucifer was waiting for Gabriel to appear and address him, and Dean did not know how that might change everything. He murmured a silent prayer that Castiel didn't decide to poof back into the midst of this and then looked over at Jo. He raised a hand in front of her mouth and felt the steady in and out of breathing. Her lungs were working inside the paralyzed shell of her exterior. He said another silent prayer of gratitude for that.
The popping sound of an angel pushing into material form broke the silence.
"Luci, I'm home!" Gabriel appeared in the middle of the room, extending his right leg and right arm in a bit of a bow. He wore the full stage makeup and costume of the villainous cat, Macavity, a ginger and black monstrosity.
"You must be kidding." Lucifer looked up and down, taking in the ensemble. "This is what you have been doing on earth."
Gabriel's mouth formed a terse line in spite of the joking tone he employed. "Oh, it's been a long time. I've been able to do a whole lot in the last couple thousand years."
"Helping your other rebellious brother did not seem to be on your list."
"You were out of line. You threw a fit and tried to smash up a whole world full of living things, things modeled after our Father, after us."
"You rebelled," Lucifer said. His tone revealed this sliver of optimism, this small, fragile feather of hope. Even the Devil wanted his brother on his side, but Gabriel was already shaking his head. The gesture should have been ridiculous coming from a theatrical cat, but the conversation's weight nullified the frivolity.
"I walked out. It's different. And having lived here amongst the humans, I have to say, they're better than we are. We're adolescents with cosmic power and insecurities about our dick size. Humans at least don't play the same song over and over again. They change."
"They're worms beneath our feet, and he wanted us to bow to them." Lucifer's cold voice quavered, nearly breaking its restraint. Dean shivered involuntarily under the weight of the cold rage conveyed. Lucifer wanted to watch the world burn. He wanted them all to die.
"I won't bow, but neither will I lead. I'm no overlord, and you should have stayed in your box."
Now Lucifer did change, his eyes flickering for just a moment with a flare of light that reminded Dean of Castiel burning blue before using his powers. He lifted his angel blade and moved towards Gabriel who merely smiled.
"Cheap trick, Luci, but I'm not actually standing in front of you." The image of Macavity, so solid, swirled into the more familiar image of Gabriel. "And if you want to find me, you'd better set these people free and start looking."
Gabriel looked regretful for one long second before snapping back to snarky. Dean recognized that Lucifer was not the only one who hoped on some impossible level that his brother would see his side of the equation. The two angels squared off, staring each other down, and then in an instant, the room snapped back to frenzied life. Lucifer and Gabriel were gone. The people moved, Jo's mouth finished its transition begun minutes ago, and she turned to Dean expectantly.
"You going to finish that sentence?" Jo asked. Then she seemed to notice that even if nothing in the room around them had changed, the men at her side had. "What happened?"
Dean saw the slightest of tremors in his own hands and finally felt the flood of fear move through the paralysis. In all of his plans, he had intended to keep his friends and family away from Lucifer. He had relied foolishly on linear thinking: if he kept everyone away from Missouri, away from Detroit, away from where he knew the Devil would be, he could keep them all from ever encountering him. He had factored out the cold reality that Lucifer was free and that every moment that Dean changed, he altered the timeline. He lost control of the situation with every piece of it he affected. He was truly reliving the Apocalypse again with a coin flipping up in the air. Chance spun above him, and he could only hope for the Heads outcome on which he had bet everything.
He looked at Jo's earnest brown eyes and realized how easily Lucifer could have snapped her neck, ended her in an instant just because he had let her tag along. He had underestimated the danger of the Apocalypse, and that sin was unforgivable for someone who had already survived it once without her.
"Lucifer." Sam said the name with surprisingly little quake in his voice. "He was here looking for Gabriel too. He froze everyone. Are you okay?"
As Sam replied to her, Dean found himself just looking at her in disbelief at his own stupidity. When Castiel appeared beside them, eyes wide, Dean barely let him get out "Lucifer and Gabriel were here, but I lost them" before he turned a stony gaze on him. He grabbed Jo's arm and tugged her toward Cas.
"Take her back to Bobby's. Now."
For once, the angel did not question him. Castiel disappeared with her before she could open her mouth in protest.