The girl grinned happily as she stared at her creation. It was perfect. It would keep her safe and protected from unwanted eyes. It was far better than her last protection, which would be why it was substantially harder to make. She slipped the necklace on, touching the gem lightly with her thumb. It was multiple, jagged crystals all tied together by silver wire. It looked harmless, but it was the one most powerful protection spell ever created, and it only took her ten years to finish properly. In the grand a scheme of things, not too long.
She didn't hesitate to go back to her favorite hunter, now that she was able to.
"Hello there boys," she said happily.
"Jesus Christ!" Dean shouted, jumping to his feet and grabbing his gun.
"Woah woah Dean... Calm down. Besides, it's not like that's gonna do any good anyway," she said.
"Wanna bet?" Dean's finger was poised over the trigger. And he would have pulled it if it hadn't been for Sam jumping in front of her.
"Dean, wait! Hold it!" Sam shouted.
"That's really touching that you wanna protect me, Sammy. But it's not necessary. If your big brother wants to try and kill me, he's welcome to. Though, Dean, it'll be a waste of your time, especially considering I don't want to hurt you."
Dean had lowered his gun now and was staring open mouthed at his brother and the female intruder. "Mind explaining to me what the hell is going on?!" he snapped.
"Deep breaths, Dean. You're gonna hurt yourself." A playful smirk flickered across the girl's face.
Dean looked at his brother, who was still standing protectively in front of who he believed to be responsible for him lasting as long as he did in the hospital. "Who the fuck is this chick?"
Sam glanced back at the familiar, and yet still unfamiliar face. "You're not gonna like this answer, but I don't actually know. But I know that she's not going to hurt us," Sam reassured his brother.
"Somehow that doesn't really help me put this picture together, Sammy," Dean retorted.
Sam went on to describe each of their meetings, telling Dean about how she'd been showing up sporadically in his life for a while.
After hearing all of this, Dean turned to the girl with a skeptical expression. "Why can't you tell us who you are?"
The girl grinned happily. "Well, thanks to my dedication and hard work, I can tell you all about me without putting myself and you in danger."
Sam spun around to look at the face that was his anchor on reality for a while. He still found comfort in it and her presence.
"My name is Pandora. And as my baby brother would say, I am an angel of The Lord." Her voice was mocking Castiel.
Dean frowned. "Somehow that doesn't make me like you anymore..." he grumbled, crossing his arms.
"Pandora? I've never heard of you in lore before..." Sam said, knitting his brows together.
"Oh trust me, you have. I've only got one story that survived my...banishment. But I promise you've heard of it." Pandora paused and plopped back onto one of the beds in the motel. "Ever heard of the story of Pandora's Box? You know...stupid girl opens up a box and lets all the bad things out into the world, disease, anger, resentment, stuff like that. The Greeks added in the last bit about hope being the only thing left in the box, which I found to be really depressing..."
"Wait wait... You're telling me that you, Pandora, opened up a box and let out all of the crap we have to deal with everyday?" Dean said. Somehow he was liking Pandora less and less the more he learned about her.
"Well it was more of a metaphorical box... But sure. So let me clear things up for you... Let's go back, hmm? Way way back. Like Adam and Eve back. Well at that time there were no bad things in the world. No anger, no pain. But there was no doubt, which meant that everyone did exactly as they were told. There was no suffering, so people were content with everything they had and didn't want to reach the full potential my father gave them. And then comes me, proud little first born daughter of Heaven-"
"First born? As in..." Sam interrupted.
"As in I'm the first angel. The failed one as far as my family is concerned, but hey..."
"But there is no record of you anywhere that I've ever seen..." Sam frowned, shocked at the information he was learning.
"When God wants to wipe every trace of you from existence, he's pretty good at doing it. Anyways, I knew that you humans had it in you to be great. I could see the possibilities for you, every chance that you'd have to make this world so amazing. But I knew that, to do that, you'd have to suffer. You would have to see tragedy to want to make a difference. But Daddy was so happy with his new toys. He didn't want anything hurting them or corrupting their simple little minds. I didn't really listen and I let out all of the shit that Dad had made. Needless to say, he was pissed. He didn't cast me down, but my brothers and sisters were not pleased with my actions. So I ran. My running only made my family more mad. I was erased from existence, no scripture or book was ever written about me in Heaven or on Earth. But thankfully, Daddy couldn't get rid of one thing. And that one thing was something the Greeks were very good at. ...Word of mouth. I knew they'd like the story, so I knew I wouldn't have a problem keeping some of my legacy. Up until that point, my family was content to let me live away from them. But when I defied their wishes and made myself known to humans, they got upset. I went into...witness protection, I guess you could say. I hid myself from angels and took on the disguise of a demon. And then I waited. Thousands of years I've been hiding, just using small protection spells and that demon disguise to keep my hidden. But ten years ago, I learned about another protection spell. It takes ten years to make, but it does the trick. I just finished it. I didn't have a reason to go near humans that draw heavenly attention until you Winchesters... If I stayed with you for too long I would be found, and my family doesn't exactly forgive and forget. But thanks to my new spell, that's not an issue anymore. So... That's it, really."
Sam and Dean were silent, both clearly stunned by the amount of information they'd just been given. Sam was the first to speak up.
"So if you're the first born does that mean that you're..."
"An archangel? Yes, it technically does. Though I never did like associating with my asshole brothers."
Dean smirked at that, clearly pleased that he found someone else who shared his opinion of angels.
The three of them stayed in silence for a while until Pandora broke it. "So where am I sleeping?"
"Sleep? You're an angel. You don't need sleep..." Dean retorted, scrunching his nose in confusion.
Pandora's blue-green gaze flickered to Dean and she rolled her eyes. "Nooo.." she drawled, "But I just finished a spell that takes ten years to steadily make and a lot of energy to finish, so it'd be nice if I could get some shut eye. Even just an hour or two."
Sam gestured to the bed that had his backpack on it. "You can sleep in my bed for your nap." He was quick to offer the bed, seeing as he probably owed his life to Pandora at some point.
Pandora was fast asleep now, mumbling quietly and clutching the pendant around her neck as if her life depended on it.
Sam sat across from her at the table, his gaze fixed on her sleeping form.
"What the hell, Sam?" Dean asked, snapping Sam out of his trance.
Sam looked up at Dean and frowned. "What do you mean?" Sam couldn't imagine why Dean would be upset. He got to trust Cas, after all. Why couldn't Sam trust Pandora?
"Why didn't you tell me about her?" Dean frowned, fixing Sam with his best big brother expression.
Sam shrugged his shoulders. "I didn't really see a need. All she did was pop up every now and again. The only time where she actually stayed was when I was in the hospital with Lucifer knocking on my brain."
Dean rubbed his face and tired eyes with his hands. "Yeah but she stayed with you then..."
Sam sighed and clenched his jaw. "And then she didn't. Was she the one to keep me alive long enough for Cas to get there? Yes she probably was. If it hadn't been for her, I'd probably be dead. But then she left, and she was gone for so long..." Sam shrugged. "I know why now, but at the time I thought she just got bored. So I didn't really see it as important."
Dean chuckled and shook his head. "Really? Hot, sassy female angel who's on our side saves you in the looney bin and you don't think it's important?"
Sam shifted uncomfortably at the phrase "looney bin". He opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted by the groggy voice of Pandora.
"Hot and sassy angel is gonna kick your asses if you don't shut up..." she grumbled, her voice gravely and thick with sleep.
Sam chuckled and they fell silent, but Pandora pushed herself up and yawned. She ran her fingers through her long brown hair, playing idly with the dyed pink tips.
"So who's your vessel?" Dean asked, interrupting the silence that had fallen over the room.
"A girl named Penelope. I picked her up around 500 BC in Greece. Had her ever since. What can I say? I'm sentimental about my vessels."
Sam couldn't say that he'd ever heard of anything using a vessel for that long, but it seemed Pandora was good at being a lot of firsts in his book.
"If I were to leave her, this body would just be empty. Her soul has died at this point... It was far too old and spent too long in a lifeless body being pushed in the back by an angel... But, with this body being pretty much empty, I was free to redecorate." Pandora crossed her arms behind her head and stared up at the ceiling. "Dyed hair and tattoos. That was what I got first."
Both Dean and Sam's eyebrows shot into their hairline.
Pandora looked up to see their surprised expressions and smirked. "Failed angel, remember? I was made with too much free will, too much power to see everything that could be... The later models had their factory settings worked out perfectly. Daddy thought he got it right with Michael, but Lucifer took after me too much for Dad's comfort."
Dean and Sam looked at each other with a perplexed expression. "So does that mean that you're the reason God punished Lucifer so harshly?" Sam was very interested to hear more about Pandora's stories.
The angel was silent for a moment before she heaved a sigh. "Yeah...maybe," she mumbled in response. She hated the idea that she really was as much of a fuck up as her family always said.
A/N: Haha! So now the title makes sense, huh? The chapters, from now on, will be longer. The only reason the previous ones were short was because they were separate meetings, so they were separated for organizational purposes. Another chapter coming up!