A/N: Ok, there was another character that made it out of the fight and suddenly he's talking to me too. Chapter five: Crowley.

This one is inspired by ccase13's comment on chapter 4 about the 50,000 loaner souls from hell and how they had been twisting Castiel up ever since. So thank you again!

Smite is Right – Chapter 5

You've gotta love Cas. It's cute really that he thinks he's won. Heartwarming. It's why I approached him in the first place.

Cas is the kind of guy who'll spend a thousand years observing a water molecule and never realise it's part of an ocean.

See, me? I'm a big picture kind of guy.

You don't go from craven excuse for a human, to meat on the torture rack, to stunt demon #4, to crossroads demon, to head of all crossroads demons, to the King of all Bloody Hell without seeing the bigger picture, without having a clear understanding of what the pieces are and who's moving them.

Cas doesn't get it. All he was focused on was stopping Raphael from booting up apocalypse 2.0. That's small potatoes.

Comes from living in heaven and looking down. Gives you a somewhat restricted view of the situation. Cas, Raphael, Michael? They're mean-spirited, they're small. They lack imagination.

More importantly, they're so blinkered by their petty fist fights, they can't see what you're doing just out of shot.

See, like Oscar Wilde said about gutters and stars, I've lived down in hell so I know all about looking up. I'm the poster demon for aiming high.

Angels always assumed there was someone at the top that cared. They believed in good and evil. Sorry, they believed in Good and Evil. They believed the hype. Lately they've been losing comrades to wacky plans that skirt breathtakingly close to the boundaries of virtue, not to mention good sense, and then lurch right over the edge of the cliff like lemmings. And questions are being asked that middle management can't answer. Obvious outcome? Everyone's angry.

Say what you want about God, but the guy has the wisdom that Castiel and those others never will. He's like Katherine Hepburn in that way. Or was it Disraeli? Never complain, never explain. And a sense of humour. Don't try and tell me the big guy's not funny as Hell.

The new lot? They wouldn't have the charm or the flair to pull this off.

So suddenly any jumped up angel can take on heaven? Take on God? Raphael can do it, Castiel can do it? Why not one of the others? Why not all the others.

Politics that'll make the House of Representatives look civilised.

Whereas Hell's always been driven by ambition. We understand it, we thrive on it, we know how to make deals and who to collaborate with, who to stab in the back. Hell is thirst for power more than a thirst for blood. Blood is just the currency. It's what you drink on a Saturday night.

Apocalypse schmapocalypse, you ask me. Title fight between Lucifer and Michael? Life goes on. Souls don't die and their ultimate destination isn't as fixed as those narrow-minded angels like to think.

So Cas thinks he's got ultimate power now. Swallowed Purgatory and thinks he's controlling those souls lighting him up like the Human Torch. Thinks they're just formless energy that he can beam at anyone he likes.

Idiot.

Never was one for self-examination, Castiel. He's all about what everyone else is doing wrong. He's ripe for it. Conditioned to follow orders since time immemorial. He might contain those souls, but some of them have wills much stronger than his. Each of those souls is working inside him, finding the cracks, exerting influence and he doesn't see it, he'll never see it.

It's already started. Castiel's bait and switch? Dog's blood? Good guys don't sacrifice dogs. Virgins? Maybe, in a pinch, but not dogs. Anyone'll tell you that.

His only hope is those three plaid shirt stooges, but he's already screwed them over a thousand times, lied, made them dance like beautiful, brainless finger puppets. Well the two Winchester boys anyway. Singer's not beautiful... Good kisser though... But, I digress.

The three of them are all that stand between him and disappearing even further up his own jacksie. Now he'll be cutting them off, paranoid, jealous for his power. He needs them to save him, and they could do it, you know. They might be knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing, rotgut swilling hicks, but only a fool underestimates them. A dead fool.

But Castiel won't be able to see that. He and his fellow angels stood and watched the history of the world play out but this trench-coated cretin can't see a Cult of Personality forming right under...sorry, right behind his nose. So, he'll drive them away with his lust for power and his irrational need for validation and then punish them for not loving him enough, and God I hope I'm there to see that.

And those souls, they're jockeying for position inside him. They'll form their own hierarchy and before he knows what's hit him, one of them'll be running the show.

And you know what? A pretty decent majority of them work for me.

Well, I thought each of these chapters was the last, and then it turned out I had more up my sleeve, so while I think I'm done now, I'm not saying anything definitive. Who knows who might start talking next?

Thanks for reading! I'd love to hear what you think...