Author's Note: So I spent a significant portion of last week (plus the weekend) sick, and that put a damper on my writing/editing time and ability, hopefully this one holds up despite that. *fingers crossed* Hope you enjoy!

Sam and Dean don't find anything outside of Little Rock, all evidence of energy surges having dissipated by the time they arrive, and the authorities chalking it up to malfunctioning equipment. The brothers still give the town a thorough twice over, but nothing pops.

Frustrated with what feels like a wasted day, they head for home.

They've barely set foot back in the bunker when Garth pings them with info on another surge that happened just the night before. So they hop back in the Impala without so much as a nap, and follow the trail north towards Minneapolis.

Their lives, ladies and gentlemen, suck.

"FBI? What's the FBI interested in something like this for?"

It's a solid question. One Sam would probably be able to answer with little difficulty if him and Dean hadn't been up for 36 hours chasing one dead end after another. (The bus bench they passed on the way into the local utility building had looked as inviting as any motel bed, even if Sam's legs would have dangled off the end.)

Dean gives the frowning engineer what Sam figures is meant to be his best charming smile, but it ends up coming off more annoyed than anything. Still, Sam gives him points for effort. He sure as hell wouldn't be able to do any better at the moment.

"Sorry, Ma'am. That's classified."

The frown on the woman's face grows more pronounced. "Uh-huh." She leans back on one heel; crossing her arms over her chest as she eyes the brothers.

"Look, I don't much care about classified, so long as you don't cause any more problems for me. I've got rolling blackouts going on from one end of town to the other to deal with. You promise not to touch anything and I'll walk you through our plant. And if you ask real nice, I may even show you our grid schematics, see if all that government training can figure out something that my crew can't. I assume you can read engineering diagrams?" Both her eyebrows arch up as she waits for a response. Dean just blinks at her, so Sam fields this one.

"Absolutely, Ma'am."

Nailed it.

She - Ms. Harrison? Harveyson? Harper? Har-something or other - nods and heads over to her desk, ruffling through a stack of papers a foot high, and twice as wide. A mug of coffee seems to materialize from nowhere in her other hand. (Sam guesses it was hidden behind the stack, but who knows at this point. If he's not hallucinating yet, he will be soon.)

"...what I get for not putting them back…" She keeps digging, taking a long sip of the drink as she does. Sam tries not to whimper at the sight, but it's possible that he might. Just a little. The constant companion that is his exhaustion crying out for the beverage so it can be put out of its misery. Ms. Har- (Gladys. Her first name is Gladys. Sam's sure of that much at least.) doesn't seem to notice. Instead she makes an 'ah-ha!' sound and yanks a packet of pages from the middle of the stack, flopping them gracelessly on top.

She gives them a weak smile, the effort highlighting her own battle with fatigue. Sam guesses she hasn't gotten much sleep in the last two days either. She jabs a finger at the diagram on top of the pile, her deep brown skin standing out in contrast to the page. "Here you go. Now I can't let you take these with you, but feel free to take photos." She scoops a set of keys into her hand and pockets them. "Give me fifteen and we can head over to the plant for an inspection."

Sam and Dean both nod and look down at the map on the table. A multitude of impossibly tiny lines, numbers, and letters stares back at them.

Shit.

On her way out the door, Gladys gestures to the far corner of the office. "Oh, and feel free to help yourself to some coffee. You both look like you could use it."

Sam and Dean manage to wait until she's out of eyeshot before descending upon the coffee pot like it holds the secrets of the universe (and also the last of it's coffee).

But only just.

~~~\/~~~

The brothers' inept perusal of the electrical grid schematics, tour of the main generator plant, and conversations with a half-dozen employees leads them to an abandoned mill in the wooded outskirts of the city that's supposedly been off the grid for a decade and a half.

They're running on fumes at this point, but they figure they can at least do a cursory inspection of the place, see if there's anything that might help the case along, before they find a motel and slip into unconsciousness.

The sun is just lowering itself behind the horizon when the car turns up along the drive, gravel crunching beneath its tires. Dean pulls the vehicle up slow, giving them both enough time to scope out the oversized brick structure settled into the ground ahead.

"Thought this was an old mill?"

Sam glances at the building, then back to the tablet in his lap, looking over the pitiful amount of info they've gathered in the last few hours. "It is."

His brother frowns, making a lopsided rolling gesture with his hand. "So where's the wheel?"

"I don't think it was that kind of mill, Dean." Sam flips through open tabs on the tablet. "Records say it was textiles. Wool, yarn, that sort of thing."

"Huh. Kinda hoped there'd be a big wheel." Sam smiles at the way Dean tries to pretend as if he isn't pouting with disappointment at the building.

"Maybe it'll be in back, along the river."

"Ya think?"

"One way to find out."

The two clamor out of the car, stopping at the trunk to load up first (flashlights, guns, knives, and salt - a hunter's best friends) and fan out to case the exterior of the building.

They don't get very far. Or rather, they can't.

Dean goes left, and Sam goes right, and thirty seconds later they are right back where they started by the side of the Impala, with no idea how they got there.

Sam's pretty sure that wasn't just a hallucination caused by sleep-deprivation. But he's not ruling it out just yet.

He meets his brother's equally confused stare over the hood, and on a silent count of three, they both of palm their guns, flip the safeties off, and try again.

Sam makes it as far as a dried out bush that's little more than kindling some fifty yards away, he thinks he saw it last time, but he hadn't been paying that close attention at the time, so he's not sure.

Now that he's waiting for it, he notices the moment that the world around him stretches out like a rubber band. When it stops he's back by the car again.

"What the fuck?" And so's Dean.

Sam doesn't even have a chance to open his mouth to respond when his brother goes stalking back out one more time. Sam's still there when his brother just appears again by the car.

"Oh, come on!"

"Together then?"

Dean grumbles out an agreement and heads towards the trunk and starts rifling through it. Sam makes his way to his brother's side. "What are we thinking? Ghost? Witch? Trickster?"

Or a nephilim. He doesn't say.

Dean tosses Sam the EMF meter. "Might as well rule out the basics." Dean grabs the sawed off and loads it up with salt rounds.

Ready, the two of them turn back to the building, heading towards the front this time. Sam a step behind Dean with half an eye on the silent meter, while Dean illuminates the path ahead with a flashlight braced against the barrel of the gun.

Sam does a quick internal review of the most likely suspects for whatever is causing the current phenomena, and decides that absent of the unknown quantity that would be the son of Lucifer...well they've handled worse with less prep time before.

With their luck he figures that means they're about to get a crash course in what it means to go against the antichrist.

All his thoughts are choked off and left to rot in the ether a moment later when a face Sam had quietly come to accept that they'd never see again steps out of the shadows.

At the sight, Dean halts mid-step just as Sam takes an elongated one forward; causing him to collide into his brother's back.

Not that either seem to notice, what with the angelic specter standing a half-dozen yards in front of them bathed in the glow of the flashlight.

"Cas?" Dean's voice breaks on the name. Fading out at the end. The one choked off syllable infused with equal parts hope, wonder, and suspicion.

Sam feels much the same.

"Hello, Dean. Sam."

~~~\/~~~

The world is awash in sepia and gray, like someone has muted all its colors, then spilled coffee on it for good measure.

Crowley hates it. Hates how if a sound isn't so low that he has to strain to hear it, then it's so deafening that it startles him. Leaving his pathetic human heart beating against his idiotic ribs and his oh-so-vital blood pulsing too fast through his too-thin veins, until he's certain they will burst.

Hates how he's become a slave to the needs and requirements of his (stolen) body. Hates how hunger gnaws at him all the time, food in too short supply in this hellscape world. Hates how his clothes, torn and tattered as they are, are beginning to hang off his thinning frame.

Hates how hard it can be to catch a breath.

Hates how his reactions are just a hair slower than he expects. Every. Single. Time. Hates how fast he's accruing a collection of scars for all his troubles.

Hates how he's getting use to Mary's stitching abilities.

How he's getting use to Mary. To Bobby.

Hates how his emotions (hah!) play against one another like an off-key orchestra, and how he never knows what might inspire a surge of rage, or send a course of saltwater to sting his eyes.

Hates how often he thinks of his mother. Of Gavin.

Of Dean.

Hates how weak it all makes him feel.

But above all else, he hates how he's never certain if he hates it at all.

~~~\/~~~

It's of zero surprise to Mary that living in an apocalypse world is as exhausting and frustrating as it is dangerous.

"I'm busy."

"Doing what?"

"Recuperating."

"Boy, your damn wounds healed up last week!"

"Yes, well. Internal wounds take longer. Better pass me the swill you call scotch. That should speed things along."

And often fraught with the urge to strangle her two new roommates.

"Tell me, what kinda demon were you again?"

"The royal kind."

"Royal pain in my ass."

"Only if you ask nicely, Robert."

At the very least, their lives here have a certain...rhythm to them. They hunt. They scavenge. They survive. (Barely, sometimes, but so long as they're left breathing when all's said and done, it's a win.)

And, in the downtime between all of that, they research. Looking for ways to stem the tide, and maybe tilt the scales in favor of the few humans that remain.

"You planning to help out any time this century, or you just gonna keep freeloading 'til ya die?"

"Is the latter an option? Because if so, I accept."

Sometimes unwillingly.

Bobby has built a somewhat effective network of hunters. It's effectiveness, as far as Mary can tell, only limited by how damn thin they are all spread. And while the repository of lore that he's collected isn't quite on par with that of the bunker back home, it's nothing to scoff at.

"Crowley! What the hell do you think you're doing?!"

"Updating your woefully inaccurate library before someone accidentally summons a shoggoth when they're trying to banish one. Might make things a bit messy, that."

"You-your blacking out the text!"

"It's hardly my fault that your reality is short on white out, now is it?"

And after food, water, and weapons, knowledge is the most valuable commodity they have.

And Crowley...well Crowley is just chock full of the latter.

So much so that Bobby - whom the former demon seems to take a special kind of joy in antagonizing - has begrudgingly admitted to being impressed by.

"I'm not saying that I don't wanna gut him three ways from Sunday most of the time, but damn it all, he knows his stuff."

Which is good, because if Mary's honest, she hates research. She'd much rather be doing something, then sitting in the dank remains of the scrapheap that they call home these days getting paper cuts as she tries to cross reference the cross reference to see if this demon begat that monster, and what the hell kind of a name is Suzy-Lou for a hunter, and why does she need to know how it mates in the first place, and Crowley get out here and help me already goddammit!

And the crazy thing is; the truly would be impossible to digest fact if she wasn't there to witness it again and again with her own two eyes is:

He helps. Every time.

Sure, there's the requisite bitching and moaning. Often paired with procrastinating at an olympic level. But it's gotten to the point that Mary thinks that it's almost a front. She can see it in the way that his fingers twitch when her and Bobby are conversing without him. How he wants to interject. Give them the answers. But he doesn't. He waits.

Waits for them to seek him out. To ask.

And while yes that is frustrating as all hell. She can see his resolve starting to crumble the longer they are here.

And the longer they are here, the more willing she is to ask.

Not just with the research. But when they are out on food runs. Or clearing out a demon nest that's gotten too close for comfort.

"Shit! Crowley. On the left. No the other left. My Left!"

"I heard you the first bloody time!"

"Then move dammit!"

It's still difficult for her on hunts, to call on him for assistance. To trust him. But it's getting easier, day by day.

Easier to ask. Easier to accept.

And that's starting to bleed over everywhere else. So that when she finds herself feeling nostalgic. Not quite missing home, because the other reality had only just begun to feel real when she'd gotten stuck in this new one, but sometimes she'll find herself missing what it was becoming. Find herself missing her boys.

And Crowley's good for that too.

"Wait a minute wait a minute. Back up. This is Sam and Dean we're talking about. My boys?"

"Do you know of another Moose and Squirrel? Non-animated, of course."

"No. Uh-uh. I don't believe you."

"Why would I lie?"

"So many reasons."

"True. But I assure you, this time, I am not. Ask them yourself, when you get back."

But most of the time, when she gives in and asks, it's either because she's in danger of banging her head against the table repeatedly if she has to look up one more thing, or because the books are in danger of meeting the business end of an axe.

She's just getting to that point now, when Crowley waltzes through the doorway to drop a stack of crumpled pages two-inches thick on the tabletop in front of Bobby. The thunk of them as they land echoed in the way the other hunter jumps in his seat.

Brows scrunched up, and a small frown in place, Bobby lifts the mismatched sheaf of papers (most of which consist of repurposed pages, with old advertisements, or useless outdated information on one side, and Crowley's meticulous handwritten scrawl on the reverse) and begins to flip through them. His eyes getting wider the further into the packet he gets. "What's all this?"

"Said I would do my part. And I have. You're welcome."

"Care to expand on that? Or do you expect me to just translate your scribblings and see what happens?"

Crowley heaves a sigh, eyes rolling to the ceiling as he slumps back where he stands, hands shoved into the pockets of the (at this point) heavily damaged and soiled coat hanging off his shoulders.

"As we've previously shared words regarding, your library is somewhat...lacking. What you hold in your hands is the first batch of oh-so-important fill in the blanks that I'm graciously providing."

Bobby flips through the stack, one by one. Making sounds somewhere between confused and appreciative as he does. Mary finds herself reaching for the pages as he finishes with them.

She's skimming through a somewhat detailed transcription of enochian sigil translations and their alternate uses when Bobby's disbelieving voice interrupts.

"How to Close the Gates of Hell. For Dummies?"

Mary glances up to see Crowley has slouched down into the vacant seat across from them. The fingers of his one hand smoothing back and forth over the uneven surface of the table.

"A personal favorite. There are several methods I'm aware of, but most require you to have an inside man, as it were, to make it happen." Mary thinks back to her boys and the bunker, and how Crowley had offered to close the gates then. She'd not really believed he was serious, even if her boys seemed to, so she'd just brushed it aside with all the other lies she'd been fed in her lifetime and forgotten about it.

"Absent of having a friendly demon in your pocket, your best bet is using the ritual found on the Demon Tablet of God." He gives the two of them a rueful, somewhat bitter smile. "Luckily for you, I'mintimately familiar with that one, and so have transcribed it to the best of my ability. Still it wouldn't be a bad idea to get your hands on the tablet, and find yourself a prophet to read it, first. My memory of the final part is a little... fuzzy."

"A prophet? Of God?

"Indeed. They can help you out with transcribing the other tablets as well. Those are listed on the next several pages. Though, I'd advise you to grind the Leviathan one into a fine dust and scatter it across the planes of existence should you find it. Assuming, of course, you haven't been enjoying this lovely bit of hell on earth these last few years?"

"Tablets of God. Prophets of God? And just where in blazes are we supposed to find these?"

Crowley gestures to the stack. "Keep looking. Page 79, subsection 4, I've provided you with a handy list of all the potential prophets I knew of back home. I'm sure some of them were never born here, and others likely met a nasty end already, but it's a start. The location of the tablets is a smidge harder to predict, given how thoroughly this place has been devastated by the warring factions. But again, it's a start."

Bobby keeps flipping, and Mary keeps grabbing the pages from him as he finishes. Some of what she's seeing corresponds to what Dean, or Sam, or the Men of Letters told her, but in much greater detail. Other items are wholly new to her.

"Course, could be easier to just roll up on God's doorstep, if he's still around these parts. Don't suppose you know anyone by the name of Chuck Shurley, or Carver Edlund, hmm? No. Well, can't hurt to look. Might get lucky."

"You're talking about finding God. The actual God."

"Yes. I'd suggest reading up on his sister first, and the Mark of Cain. Nasty bit of work, that. Though in the end, we did gain back the lovely Mother Mary here thanks to her. Or rather, thanks to Dean Winchester's unending ability to worm his way into the hearts of the most heartless of entities. That all starts on Page 236."

"Wait a sec. God's sister did what now?!"

"Oh, did Mary not tell you that she was recently resurrected as well? We're thinking of starting a club."

"No. She didn't."

Mary shuffles in her seat, annoyed at being called out. "It didn't seem relevant."

"Didn't seem- I need a drink." Bobby moves off to grab the ratgut from the next room, grumbling about secret keeping jackasses the whole way.

Mary keeps flipping.

Floored by the absolute breadth of information that she's finding in the pages, she lifts her gaze to Crowley. Trying, and failing, once again to figure him out.

"When did you have time to do all of this?"

"Here and there."

"Here and there? I haven't seen you working on this at all."

"You're not the most observant when you're busy threatening the bindings, authors, innocent and not so innocent publishers of all the texts under this roof."

Mary huffs out a denial, she's never that unaware of her surroundings, but she lets it go all the same. Opting instead to focus on the section titled "A Hierarchy of Hell: Princes, and Knights, and Demons, Oh My!"

Which is why it catches her off guard when Crowley speaks up. His voice low and tired. When she looks at him again, he's looking at the table. The corners of his mouth turned down into his unkempt beard.

"At night, mostly. I don't...sleep so well. It's either this." He taps his fingers on the part of the stack in front of Bobby's still empty chair. "Or drink myself to death. Been there, done that. Not really looking for a repeat just yet. So..." He shrugs. And she finds herself in the odd position of wanting to offer him comfort, but having absolutely no idea how.

So instead, she pulls up the book she'd been about to tear apart with her bare hands when he came in, and asks him what he knows about chimera.

If she catches the look of relief on his face before his usual smug facade shutters into place, well who's she gonna tell anyway?