Chapter 19

Dean, Charlie and Chuck quickly made their way towards the exit no longer flying under the radar. Lucky for them they had Charlie who would fling an unsuspecting angel away before they could attack, but the same trick wouldn't work twice and they needed to get out of there quick.

Cas and Sam were supposed to wait for them in the Impala but the others ran into them first. Cas held Sam over his shoulders and everyone could see that he was gravely injured. Dean and Chuck pushed past a still-fighting Charlie as they moved to help get Sam out of there and far from the angels.

None too soon they found themselves outside the building and praying that their preparations hadn't been washed away Charlie tossed a lighter. A ring of holy oil burned around the entire building locking every angel inside. It wouldn't last forever, nature or man would put it out, but it was a good enough bulwark against the angels for them to stop.

Sam was hurt, like fatally injured, and his consciousness had long since faded. Blood boiled inside him from the tremendous amount of wounds inflicted upon him by the angels after he ran out of magic bullets. Cas had gotten him before they could kill him, but it was bad and he wasn't going to last any longer.

"Let me through," Charlie said to the others attempting to push to Sam's side.

"You stay away from him!" Dean cried to her. "It's your fault we came here anyways! Castiel! What are you just doing standing there! Heal him!"

"I can't Dean," Cas reminded quietly. "But Charlie can."

"No!" Dean told them pushing Charlie away in his worry. He didn't care that she could help Sam now. All he knew was it's her fault Sammy was hurt in the first place.

Luckily, Chuck and Cas both still had their brains on their heads and they pulled Dean off his dying brother so Charlie could get through. Pressing her hands against Sam's chest Charlie became surrounded by a brilliant light stronger and brighter than even the healing power of Michael. When she was done Sam, while still unconscious, no longer had blood oozing from his mouth. He'd be okay.

"Like I said. I can heal. Easy as pie," Charlie said with a laugh before falling to the ground in exhaustion.

"We should leave her here," Dean said furious about what her actions had done to them even if she'd fixed Sam's wounds.

None of them blamed him, and none of them were ready to jump to Charlie's defense, but finally Cas looked at Dean and said calmly, "She's already proven how gullible and easy to persuade she is. We'd be delivering that right into the hands of Lucifer and his demons if we left her."

With a sigh Dean picked her up, far too gently for his words of malice to be true, and carried her to the car. "Come on. Let's pack these sleeping beauties up and hit the road before the fire department arrives."

Even though the Impala was fuller than it's been in a very long time the car ride back to the bunker was silent. When they arrived Sam had awoken enough to both walk in himself and carry the still unconscious Charlie back to her devil's trap room. When he came back to the main area after dropping her off he looked worried, but not over his own injuries or their many problems, but Charlie. Like it or not she was his little sister and annoying and dangerous as she was she had her virtues too.

"Will she be okay?" he asked almost rhetorically. No one knew but Cas spoke quietly sounding a lot like his old angel self.

"The light she used to heal you is called provenience. The brighter it is, the more energy it uses. Until today I would have said only an archangel tapped 100% into Heaven could shine so bright. Charlotte was pulling from her own reserves, not Heavens and the amount of energy she used is terrifying. It's terrifying that she needed it."

"So I wasn't wrong," Chuck whispered for the first time since they rescued him. "Sam was already gone and she brought him back."

"So it would seem." Castiel told them with a nod. "So it would seem."

"So she can bring the dead back to life now!" exclaimed Dean. "Is there anything that girl can't do because I'd like to know what for when we have to fight her."

"You won't have to fight Charlie, that's not her way. I've known her for as long as I've known you, longer technically. She might be scary. She might be powerful, but she isn't going to fight you."

"She's fought us before," Sam reminded them. "While Dean was out doing his trials we fought her multiple times."

"Trust me Sam. If you're alive them she wasn't really fighting."

Everyone was quite for a minute before Dean changed the subject. "Speaking of being alive… what the Hell happened to you Chuck? Last time we saw you was before Sam went to hell and then poof you're dead and we're dealing with Kevin."

Chuck looked uncomfortable, no wonder, he was talking about how he died and it wasn't exactly the most honorable death. "I might have over dosed."

"By accident? Or on purpose?" Sam asked quietly.

"I saw this. I saw what Charlie would do. The angels didn't seem to know so I figured they wouldn't feel the need to bring me back, they'd let another take my place. I didn't want to have to live through the Apocalypse twice."

"None of us do," Dean told them annoyed. "Come on, it's time to wake Snow White up from her poison apple nap."

To their surprise Charlie was already awake when they entered her bunker. She sat on her bed playing "the Cup Song" with her hands clearly bored out of her mind.

"Oh. You're back. I take it despite the fact I saved Chuck from torture and brought Sam BACK TO LIFE I'm a prisoner again." Charlie was trying to sound nonchalant, but the annoyance clearly was starting to get to her.

"It's your fault he was killed in the first place!" Cas told her grudgingly.

"Cas," Sam began but Cas ignored him.

"My fault Castiel! You're just mad because you could heal him yourself because you lost your grace."

"And if it hadn't been for the archangels shirking their duty over you Kevin would never have been captured by Crowley and we wouldn't have gone looking for metatron alerting that psycho to the state of Heaven!" Cas flared back with gritted teeth.

"Oh give me a break!" Charlie cried, "Don't act like you're angry because Sam got hurt. The only reason you ever started helping Sam and Dean in the first place was out of pure selfishness because you know it's your fault us Winchesters are vessels!"

The words were spit out in fury by a lying part demon. No one would have believed them if it weren't for the guilty look on Castiel's face and his biting remark, "You know nothing of that."

"Wait. Cas. What does she mean it's your fault we're vessels. I thought it was just in our bloodline," Dean asked stepping close to his friend but also concerned that there was another thing the ex-angel had forgotten to mention.

"You don't know?" Chuck asked surprised, "I thought you read all of the books."

"We did. Cover to cover even though we'd lived through them. Why?" asked Sam.

"You didn't read Mattias did you?" Charlie asked clearly feeling guilty for bringing it up but knowing now that it was out it was out.

"What's Mattias? Those books are our life shouldn't we know what's in them?"

"Mattias wasn't in the main series. It talked about your lineage…dating back to the time of Cain and Abel."

"I remember now. That's when Michael said it came into our bloodline. Are you saying Cas was responsible for that? How?" Dean told them quietly not wanting to believe that Cas had done this to them from before they were even born.

"It's hard to explain… but I could show you?" Charlie told them stepping closer.

"Even if you hadn't just drained yourself I don't know any angel who can go back that far. Not even Michael." Cas warned not wanting the Winchesters to know the truth.

"Good thing time travel isn't solely an angel ability," Charlie told them faking a smile. She knew this might kill her, but her brothers needed to understand how they got into this mess so they could understand how to get out of it. "Vassgio has the unique ability to jump to any point in his timeline, past or future, which, if I'm correct, he gave to me. I can go anywhere he ever was or will be. So there we will go. Back to the beginning."

Without waiting for their seal of approval Charlie touched her hands to her brother's foreheads sending the three Winchesters hurtling through time to learn the truth.