Chapter 43 The Guardian of Conscience

Ignacio, Colorado

Sam woke abruptly, plucking the damp shirt away from his skin as his face screwed up with the sour smell of sweat that had soaked it. He needed to find the angel, he thought, standing up and swaying slightly as the room spun lazily around him. Needed to find him now.

He pulled off the t-shirt, dropping it on the floor and grabbing a clean shirt from the duffle beside the bed. He could hear something, high and jittery and strange. He had to find the angel. Had to start the trial. Had to.

The hotel was silent. Eerily silent, except for the noise. The one that he only partly heard with his ears.

The hall was lit by wall sconces, positioned precisely at his eye level and he lifted an arm as he staggered past one, the light spearing into his eyes, shredding the little focus he had. Turning the corner, he looked down another long, narrow corridor, lit on both sides by more of the bright lights, the walls shifting and blurring in his vision, the end and the elevator doors advancing and retreating in an unsettling manner. Had they come up on the elevator or the stairs, he wondered irrelevantly?

He was halfway down when the elevator gave a discreet 'ting' and the doors opened. Wheeling awkwardly into a small side hall, he pressed himself tightly against the wall, holding his breath as he listened to the sound of footsteps and the squeak of cart wheels approaching. He couldn't fight, could hardly see.

The footsteps stopped, and there was a soft thud. Peering cautiously out around the corner, Sam watched the manager shifting packages from the cart to the piles of boxes already stacked up in front of one of the guest rooms. The footsteps and the squeaky wheel started again as the man walked back to the lift, and he let out his breath as he heard the doors close and the machinery start up.

The noise, a high-pitched, grating whine in his ears, was getting louder. His teeth ached from it and he set them against each other, pushing off the wall to get back to the corridor.

In the small recessed doorway to the room, dozens of boxes and packages, large and small, had been stacked. Sam dropped to his knees, alternating between a tight squint and opening his eyes wide as he tried to read the labels affixed to the ones on the top, the light from the wall above him brightening and fading as the noise increased. He looked at the box in front of him and pulled off the tape, ripping the flaps of the cardboard box as he struggled to get it open. Under the packing, several books were nested. The top one was a hardback, a dark blue cover with gold-foil printing. Sam lifted the book out and brought it closer to his face. Charles Dickens. Oliver Twist. Stamped on the cover. He glanced at the book beneath. Another novel. And beneath that several more. Two were classics, the others popular fiction. What the hell?

His teeth and jaw were hurting. The bones of his skull were hurting. He put the book back in the box and lurched to his feet, looking at the door of the room. It swam in and out of his vision and he turned around, almost falling headlong as he leaned forward before his feet had caught up with the intention to move.

Ringing. Grating. Whining. Bright. Dim. Heat. And more heat, flooding up through him and sucking the strength from his muscles, the control from his nerves. Demon fever, he thought incoherently, bouncing off the wall to the right hand side of the corridor, his feet tangling as he veered diagonally across the hall and lifted a hand to push off before he hit the other side, weaving from side to side.

He had to tell Dean. It was a sign. The noise was a sign. The books were a sign. The angel was close, he could feel it in his head, in his teeth, in the spaces behind his eyes.

He opened the door to the room, slamming into it with his shoulder as he tried to close it before he'd gotten through, swinging around and hearing it shut behind him. Dean. Call Dean. The phone was in his hand, and he caught the first burble of the cell as it dutifully called the number he'd pressed, but darkness and silence swallowed him up before he heard the voice at the other end.

Santa Fe, New Mexico

"There is no trace of the tablet along the route he took," Aion said tersely to his superior.

Naomi turned to look at Castiel. "Where is it, Castiel? Why are you keeping it to yourself when you know it belongs in Heaven?"

Cas looked up at her. Belonged in Heaven, he thought disbelievingly. A Heaven without obedience, without hope or honour or care.

"I don't know that," he said coldly. "I don't know who you are, or what interests you serve. I don't know why killing humanity and the seraphim under your protection has become standard procedure. What I do know is that I will not let it fall into the hands of those who will misuse it. It was not meant for angels."

"I'm just going to have to pull you apart, aren't I?" Naomi said, and looking into her eyes, Castiel suddenly realised that the prospect did not make her flinch. No remorse or mercy existed in the storm-wrack irises or behind them.

She could do what she would, he thought. He had been broken and mended so many times now that it was questionable if anyone could even find all the pieces again, let alone put them back together. He had regrets, sorrows. He would regret not being able to tell his friends what they had meant to him. What he'd learned from them.

The gunshot was deafening and Araphiel dropped instantly, light filling every corner of the room as the angel's spirit burst from the vessel and died, the light in the room fading to nothing.

Naomi's head snapped around as the second shot took Aion in the shoulder, the seraphim falling sideways to the floor.

"Naomi … darling," Crowley said, lowering the automatic as he smiled at her. "Miss me?"

"How did you find us?"

"Oh, I've been watching you for a while now," Crowley said dismissively. "Pays to keep up with current events." He looked at the gun. "Do you like it? I had my R&D people melt down one of your angel blades, cast it into bullets. Seems to do the trick."

"How dare you!" she snarled, her eyes spitting fury at him.

"I'm the daringest devil you've ever met," Crowley said, with a comfortable shrug. "You have no idea of the scope of my plans."

"You'll be roasting on your own fires," she promised him, her vessel's eyes lighting up as she called to and drew on the souls in Heaven. Light seeped through her, the billionfold power brightening.

"We've been here before, haven't we?" Crowley's hand lifted, the gun aimed at her. "Let's see who blinks first," he said, pulling the trigger.

The bullet passed through the light and embedded itself in the wall as she disappeared. Damn, they were quick, he thought to himself. It'd been a fun couple of weeks, way back when. But probably something best not to think of revisiting.

"Hi, Cas," he said, walking around the chair and looking at him.

Castiel watched as Aion got to his feet, his sword held loosely in one hand. He looked at Crowley.

"That's right, Cas, I got me an angel on the payroll," Crowley confirmed cheerfully. "I wouldn't be too hard on him, matey; it's that kind of universe these days."

He lifted the gun, shifting the barrel a little as he fired. The bullet hit Castiel in the abdomen, light flooding out through the charred entry hole. He gasped. Crowley turned to Aion.

"Now, grab him!" he ordered the angel. "And follow me."

Ignacio, Colorado

Dean swore as he pushed against the door, able to see his brother's shoulder through the four inches he could get open, realising that Sam was blocking it from opening further. He shoved hard and watched his brother's body flop over with the force of the push, squeezing in through the gap and shutting the door with his foot as he crouched beside him.

"Dammit, what did you do?" he muttered at Sam, snatching his hand away as he felt the burning hot skin on his face.

He was going to roast his brain cells at this rate, he knew, running to the bathroom, twisting the cold tap savagely and shoving the plug into the tub. He returned to the main room to grab Sam's arm and haul it over his shoulder, squashing down the shock that filled him when he registered his brother's weight, half-lifting, half-dragging him into the bathroom. The last time he'd had to carry Sam, there'd been a good forty pounds more on his tall frame. He eased him down to the floor, not wanting to think about that loss or what it meant.

The water was filling the enormous cast-iron tub slowly and he dipped his hand in, shaking his head slightly at the temperature. He left Sam propped against the bathroom door and crossed the room, looking down the hall for the ubiquitous piece of machinery that sat in most hallways of every hotel and motel across the country. Two minutes later he came back and dumped the bucket into the bath, not looking at Sam as he turned and shot out of the room again, getting a second bucket and turning off the water when he'd dumped that in as well.

Crouching beside Sam, Dean caught up both of his brother's hands and levered his bigger frame over his shoulder. Again the weight loss caught him by surprise and he used the flash of reactive anger as he straightened, picking him up and carrying him to the edge of the bath, bending to release him into the ice-filled water. For a moment, his brother sank below the surface and his heart shuddered against his ribs, wondering if he'd taken too long, been too late. Then Sam catapulted out of the water, dragging in a deep breath, his skin white and goose-fleshed.

"Okay, take it easy," Dean said soothingly as Sam glared at him and climbed out of the cold water, anger and confusion at the situation warring over his face.

"You were on the floor and I could feel the heat from five feet away, Sam," Dean explained, passing him a towel. Sam wrapped it around his shoulders, his gaze fixed on his brother.

"He's here! I can feel him – I can hear him!"

"I know," Dean said, gesturing to the room.

"What?"

"I know he's here," Dean said again, leaning back against the sink. "The whole town, it's been laid out as a deflection sigil. An angel deflecting sigil."

"What?"

"Get dry, get dressed," Dean said, gesturing impatiently at the doorway. "You can hear him?"

"Somewhere here, and close, Dean," he said, turning and walking into the room, his teeth chattering softly. He stopped dead next to the bed and Dean swerved around him. "I don't know why, it feels like I'm connected to him … somehow."

"What?" Dean frowned. "Like a prophet kind of connection?"

"I don't think so. I can show you," Sam told him, dropping the towel on the end of the bed. "I saw the manager, delivering books to him."

"Books?"

"Books!" Sam repeated agitatedly, dragging off his clothes and dropping them on the floor as Dean tossed him dry ones from the bag. "Hardcovers, paperbacks, novels … books!"

"Stories," Dean said slowly as the connection came, the messenger's blessing for the …

"Offerings."

"What?" Sam paused as he pulled the shirt over his head.

"The guy down at the museum said that the tribe gave stories as their offerings to the Great Spirit's messenger."

"And they're still doing it?"

"I guess so," Dean shrugged, tossing a pair of socks at him. "That's a lotta books, after all this time."

Amherst, Massachusetts

Kevin looked down at the take-out box in front of him. The ribs were good, almost as if they were real, he thought.

"I can't do it," he said, throwing his pen down. "It's the break in the stone – there's key writing and I can't make it out." He looked up at Sam. "You guys were right, I do need the other half of the tablet to get the trial. It's not too far from here."

"Awesome," Dean said. "What's the ten-twenty?"

"Springfield Storage, unit four-twenty-four, Springfield, Missouri," Kevin told him. "It's in the toolbox at the back of the unit."

"Right," Sam said, nodding. "We're on it."

"Okay, see you later," Kevin said, watching them walk out. It was a legitimate address. Dean'd told him about it months ago, when they'd been waiting for Sam to get back with Garth. Just one of those conversations that sometimes stick in the mind. Useful, though.

Ignacio, Colorado

"I'm not a hundred percent convinced that we shouldn't at least get a doctor to look at you, Sam," Dean said, pulling the door closed behind him.

"It wouldn't do any good, they wouldn't find anything," Sam said, using the wall next to him to keep upright and walking. "They'd do all the tests under the sun and they wouldn't find one goddamned thing. Except for the temperature."

"And the bleeding lungs," Dean added acerbically. "Don't want to forget those."

"I'm still remembering things, Dean." Sam ignored the comment, closing his eyes for a moment. "So clearly."

"Great."

"You used to read to me."

Dean looked at him. At least that didn't sound too bad.

"When I was little," his brother continued, weaving across into him and back to the wall. "I mean when I was really little. All kinds of stuff, Dean. You remember that?"

"No," he said, stepping to the side as Sam wandered into him again. "I mean, yeah, so what?"

"I remember the Little Train That Could … and Old Yeller, you remember Old Yeller? I had a dream, Dean," Sam slowed down. "Except that I think it was really a memory. In a dream."

Dean watched him, not liking the way Sam was rambling around different things, not wanting to know what the memory in the dream had been about.

"Dad was talking to Jim about me. About the blood." Sam said. "He knew, back when we were just little kids. Knew about Mom and the demon and what it had done. Knew he might not be able to save me."

"Sam, it was just a dream."

"No," Sam said, stopping and looking at him, his eyes clear and bright. "No, it was a memory. I heard them talking about it. I didn't remember that, until now. But I always knew that there was something wrong with me. I just didn't know that I knew."

"It wasn't your fault."

Sam shook his head vehemently. "I know that, Dean. That's not the point. The point is that it was there. All this time. And I – I wasn't innocent. I wasn't good. I was – I don't know – tainted. Fouled. Not clean."

Dean looked at him, seeing the revulsion in his brother's face, the loathing he felt for the thing that had lived inside of himself.

"Sam, that wasn't you –"

"Dammit, are you listening to me?" Sam pushed off against the wall, one arm swinging a little high as he turned. "It was me. It was lying right up against me, my whole life. It's still me." He stopped again, his head dropping. "Until now."

"What do you mean?"

"These trials, Dean," Sam said slowly, turning to look at him. "They're burning it out. I can feel that. Cell by cell, it's being dragged out of me, like the vampire cure did for you with the vamp's blood, and it's being burned up by what I've done, by each one I finish, I pass. I need the third trial, Dean. Then I'll be clean. Then I'll be just me, the way it was supposed to be."

Dean nodded slowly, and Sam looked at him in surprise. "You knew that?"

"No, I didn't know it," he said. "I thought maybe …"

"Is that why you haven't tried harder to get me to the hospital?" Sam asked.

"Yeah, I guess," Dean said. "I didn't want to force you into something that wasn't going to help. I just can't sit around and not do anything."

"I know."

"What were you going to show me?" Dean asked, looking down the hall. He wanted to get off the subject. It'd never been a good one.

Sam pointed down the hall. "The room near the elevator."

They walked along the corridor and stopped at the recessed doorway. Sam stared down at the empty floor. "But they were here, the books, the boxes – they've gone."

"Not far," Dean looked at the floor next to the door. The drag marks were clear enough. He stepped up to the door, pulling his picks out. The lock was very simple. Why bother with deadlocks when you lived down the rabbit hole, he thought to himself as he turned the knob silently and pushed the door open.

Inside the room were books. Hundreds of books, Sam thought.

Thousands of books, Dean realised, peering in the through the open doorway. Stacked against the walls, stacked in towers in the middle of the room, forming narrow, precarious pathways through them, piled on top of the furniture, on top of the wall cupboards, filling bookshelves long past the capacity to hold them, shelves sagging and bowing under the weight, stacked along the top so that the room could only be viewed in small slices.

Sam pressed a hand to his ear, the noise – the oscillation – getting louder, more intense in his head. He turned around, looking for the source

Dean walked slowly through the maze of the piles toward the end of the room and stopped as the rifle was cocked, the small sound loud in the silent room, his hand swinging wide to warn his brother.

The man holding the gun was small and round. Thick, grey, curly hair and a clipped beard framed a face that might've have looked convivial in other circumstances. A muted brown cardigan over shirt and pants gave the man the look of a retiree, early sixties, maybe, Dean thought.

"Who are you?"

Dean wondered if he knew their names.

"Metatron," Sam said, his face screwing up as the vibration in his skull became more pronounced and he lurched closer to his brother.

"This is Metatron?" Dean asked, brows rising as he looked from the man to Sam and back. "This is Metatron?"

"Sit down," the angel said, the long-barrelled rifle still aimed at Dean. Dean backed toward the armchair, Sam stumbling backwards to a straight-backed chair near it. He couldn't hear his footsteps or anything but the metallic shriek in his head.

"Who sent you?"

"We came on our own," Sam said loudly, feeling his fillings rattling inside his teeth. "We're the Winchesters."

Metatron looked at him narrowly, his gaze flicking back to Dean.

"I'm Dean," he said, gesturing to his brother. "This is Sam."

"Do you work for Michael?" the angel asked suspiciously. "Or Lucifer?"

Sam stared at him, eyes almost shut as he tried to simultaneously shut out the noise in his head and understand what the angel was saying. "What? How – how long have you been out of circulation?"

Amherst, Massachusetts

Cas looked around at the study as Crowley walked around the desk and took the chair behind it. "Just wanted to take a moment away from the main chain, to chat, with my old business partner," he said, leaning back, the gun still held in one hand. "I assume you won't die, just yet. It takes a painful long time to bleed out from a gunshot."

"You can do whatever you want, Crowley," Castiel said. "I will never tell you where I buried the tablet."

Crowley looked at him, sighing. "I know, Cas," he said resignedly. "I know. Luckily, I don't believe you'll have to."

The angel looked up at him warily. Crowley was too relaxed, and far too affable. The demon had little control over his emotions, and seeing him like this was a reliable indicator that he thought he already knew everything he needed.

"I've been getting regular updates from my, expensive, friend here," he said conversationally, glancing at Aion. "Naomi should've caught you straight out of the gate, seeing as lately she's been knuckles-deep in that melon of yours," he continued, looking back at Castiel. "She thinks that when you touched the tablet, it broke her … construction … in your mind."

Cas kept his gaze on Crowley, his face expressionless. He could feel a trickle of unease, threading its way through him, overriding the pain. This then, he thought irrelevantly, was what Dean had told about him about instinct.

"The tablets weren't meant for the angels," he ground out at the demon. "And they weren't meant for you."

"She's got a lot on her plate, so you can't fault her for missing it," Crowley said, the affability disappearing as he got up, walking around the desk and stopping in front of Cas. "And I was thinking to myself, Self … if Cas got away from her by touching the tablet, why would he ever … stop touching the tablet?"

He leaned back against the desk. "And then I thought to myself – Self, he hasn't stopped touching the tablet, now, has he?"

Cas stared up at him as he smiled, then chuckled. The hand that flashed out hit the angel's torso under the ribs, fingertips driving in through his flesh in a single motion as the demon searched around the organs for the stone.

Blinding pain filled Cas' vessel and his teeth snapped together, locked hard against it. Crowley drew the stone out with a delighted laugh, and the pain washed over and through him, an unending sea of it through the mesh of Jimmy's nervous system, rebounding and rippling and rebounding again.

Cas stared up at Aion, catching the seraphim's discomforted stare, locking onto it as he reached in vain for the healing power of the souls, energy, anything. Aion's gaze cut away and Cas felt the emptiness at the end of the reach. He was not connected. He could not reach them.

"Oh, you're a pip, you are," Crowley said, looking from the bloodied tablet to him. "What am I going to do with you, Cas?"

The trill of his cell interrupted that pleasant train of thought and he transferred the tablet to the other hand as he reached for it.

"What?"

"The kid told us where the other half was but it wasn't," the demon who'd been monitoring Kevin Tran's translations said on the other end of the line, his voice loud over background music. "Sent us into some kind of hunter's mouse-trap."

Crowley stared at the phone disbelievingly. "You jack-asses! You're ruining my streak!"

He closed the call and put the phone back in his pocket, turning to Aion. "Watch him."

"I'll be right back," he promised Cas, and vanished.

Ignacio, Colorado

Dean relaxed a little as the barrel was lowered. "Michael and Lucifer, they're in the Cage."

"WE PUT THEM THERE OURSELVES," Sam said loudly, his fingers pressed tightly over his ears.

"And Gabriel?" Metatron asked, looking at Dean. "Raphael?"

"DEAD!" Sam shouted at him.

Dean flinched a little at Sam's volume, focussing on the angel. "You really don't know this?"

"I've been very careful," Metatron told him.

"HEY! CAN YOU TURN THAT DOWN?" Sam asked, the scraping, spinning noise drilling relentlessly against his ears – the insides of his ears, he thought.

"Turn what – oh, you're resonating?"

"Resonating? What do you mean, resonating?" Dean asked, looking at his brother.

"He's undertaken the trials?" Metatron asked, looking at Dean. "Which one?"

"HELL!" Sam yelled. Dean winced and nodded.

"Pretty far along too," Metatron said consideringly. "You get that far along and you start to resonate – with the Word."

He shrugged. "Or with its source, on the material plane. With me," he added, seeing the question in Dean's face.

"Can you feel the tablets?" Dean asked abruptly. "All of them?"

"Sometimes," Metatron said, lowering the end of the barrel to the floor. "Not always and not all of them."

"You said you were being careful," Dean said, filing away the answers. "Careful – why?"

"I'm not one of them," the angel said. "I'm not an archangel."

"You don't all play for the same team up there?" Dean asked curiously.

Metatron smiled dryly. "No, I'm afraid that doesn't seem to work much anywhere, that I've noticed." He set the rifle down and moved a pile of books from another straight-backed chair, pulling it out from behind the stack. "It did, when He was there, you understand. Then everyone did what they were supposed, more or less."

"Not Lucifer," Dean said, giving him a dry look.

"No," Metatron agreed solemnly. "Not him. But that was the beginning of the end, you know. Adam's introduction and the rebellion and the war that followed. He saw it coming and he had me write down the instructions, for his Creations. For you."

"For us?"

"For all humanity. He knew what the timeframes were likely to be, you see. And He knew what would happen. And He wanted to see if He was right."

"Right about what?" Dean asked uneasily, feeling a sinking suspicion of what the angel was getting at.

"Oh, I think you know the answer to that," Metatron said, leaning back. "In any case, once He'd gone, I think everything went about along the lines He'd thought it would. And I realised, somewhat belatedly, I'll admit, that when the archangels worked out that what they had planned was going to require the Word, and its power, I got out, and I covered my tracks and buried myself and I left them to it."

"So you ran," Dean said, staring at him. "You have no idea of what's been going out there."

The angel smiled a little. "Oh, I know what's been happening, Dean. I know the paths that humanity – and everyone else – has chosen to take."

"You said –"

"I haven't watched it or listened to it," Metatron said, nodding. "But I know. He foresaw it, an aeon of chaos, of too many toys and no self-discipline, ages of cruelty and self-absorption and genocide and power struggles and for what? Wealth? That fleeting flash in the night?" He looked at them. "For power? For history and fame and glory? For love or hate? For revenge? There are no limits to the temptations that humanity will listen to, have listened to and have convinced themselves of."

"If you'd taken the time to look outside," Dean snapped at him. "You'd see that it's not just humanity that's been fiddling the odds and power plays!"

"No, of course not," Metatron agreed readily. "Hell whispered and Heaven joined in, both determined to have what they think is rightfully theirs – and humanity is caught between them. But that is the essence of free will. And choice. That you may choose what you will do – but the consequences, the victory, or the mess, belong to you as well. Are your responsibility."

He gestured around the room. "What humanity was given in its making was something that no other species, terrestrial, extra, ultra or universal has," he said. "The spark of the Divine, creativity."

Sam frowned, glancing at his brother. "And?"

"And?" the angel said in astonishment. "And when it is allowed to flourish, when it is nurtured and disciplined, given time and effort, the results have been … well … heavenly – Mozart and Beethoven, Dickens and Shakespeare and Adams, Michaelangelo and Rembrandt and Baryshnikov and Sutherland and Streisand … poets and artists and ordinary families, creating islands of sanity in the chaos and raising their children to grow tall and strong and to think for themselves … this is what it is for, don't you understand that? To lift the mind, the heart, the soul to the highest pinnacle."

"That's not exactly what most people are doing," Sam said, feeling the resonance fade for a moment in his ears.

"No, it's not," Metatron said, nodding. "And creativity, when it is thwarted or ignored, treated irreverently or punished, becomes destruction. As you have seen."

"You're talking about this as if you have no part in it," Sam said. "As if it has nothing to do with you!"

"It doesn't," Metatron said with a small shrug. "My directive was clear. When humanity had evolved enough, I was to give them the Word – all of the tablets – so that they could take control of their destiny. But, humanity has not evolved."

"That might've been a nice idea before the demons starting coming through gates that your kind opened for them!" Dean said furiously, staring at him. "It might've sounded like a reasonable fucking plan when the angels were doing their jobs! Don't talk to me about responsibility! I grew up on responsibility, on doing whatever you had to, to make sure that people were protected, were kept safe! And that those who have the ability to do the job – also have the responsibility to see that it is done!"

"I have my orders and like every other being with free will, I –"

"You don't want to sacrifice your nice, cushy life, safe and surrounded by make-believe, to go out there and do what you have the capability of doing," Dean cut him off. "Let me tell you a story … this is about a kid who was doing alright in an ordinary life. Straight A student. Mom who loved him ferociously. Then he got sucked in … to all this … angel … crap and he became a prophet. Of the Word of God. Your prophet," he snapped, stabbing a finger at the angel for emphasis.

"Now you should have been looking out for him, but no, instead you're here, holed up, reading books – stories!"

"He's dead now," Sam added. "Because of you."

The angel dropped his gaze. "He's not dead."

Dean and Sam looked at each other. "Not?" Sam asked uncertainly.

"No, he's being held by the demon who has styled himself the King of Hell," Metatron said, turning away. "In Massachusetts, I think."

"Can you get him?" Dean frowned at the angel's manner. "He's your responsibility."

"I know." Metatron looked up at him. "You were right about that. He is my prophet."

He gestured to the stacks. "Cover your eyes, or turn away – don't look at the light."

Dean opened his mouth, the response near automatic and Sam elbowed him, pushing him further away from the open area and turning his back.

They saw their shadows leap onto the stacks and shelving in front of him, jet black, the colour bled out from everything else, and Dean heard the high-pitched whining, saw the glasses on the cupboard by the window reverberating delicately as the angel behind them called on the power he'd denied himself for millennia and reached out.

Amherst, Massachusetts

Castiel looked at the angel standing by the window. "How far can we let it go?"

"Shut up."

"How far can we let it all drop?" Cas persisted. "This charge, this duty, was left to us in trust – it is the sole purpose of our existence."

"Do you even know what the purpose was, Castiel?" Aion turned and walked to him, shaking his head. "They've been in all our heads."

"We aren't … machines … for anyone to program," Cas said slowly. "We were created to serve, created to obedience. Weapons, yes, but directed by those who worked for the purpose."

Aion stared at him for a moment. "That's all gone, Cas. Nothing matters."

"You are so wrong, my brother," the angel said, as Aion turned away again. He could feel it. Deep inside. It would take some effort to withdraw it. His fingertips found it, slipping off the casing. "It all matters."

He closed his eyes and drew out the flattened slug. In a non-vital area of the vessel's body it would only wound. But in a vital area, it would kill.

"Who's running things now?" Cas asked.

"I don't know," Aion admitted. "Everything there is compartmentalised, Castiel. Everything is divided and everyone is suspicious of everyone else."

"That sounds like an excuse."

The angel laughed humourlessly. "Does it? Do you think Samandriel thought it was an excuse when you killed him, Castiel? Do you think that without the Word in your hand you wouldn't have kept beating that human until there was nothing left but a bloodied pulp on the floor?"

Cas rose silently from the chair, crossing the room in two strides. "Aion."

The angel turned and Castiel thrust the slug into his eye, pushing it past the semi-fluid eyeball and into the brain behind. Light flooded out of the vessel, brilliant and clean and filling the air with its singular frequency and then gone.

"We have all betrayed, and we have all been betrayed, my brother," Cas said, releasing his grip on the dead vessel's jacket and allowing the body to slump to the floor. "But it does not mean that we give up our purpose, or the right that stands behind it."

This is simple, Cas! No more crap about being a good soldier. There is a right and there is a wrong here, and you know it.

He remembered that, he thought as he staggered back, away from the window. He remembered the voice of his friend, the man who had once been his friend. And he remembered how it had felt to follow him into a battle that they couldn't possibly win, but somehow … had.

Kevin looked up as the metal pressure door fell inwards to the floor, Crowley stepping over it and striding down toward him. Well, he thought, here it was. Showtime.

"You little prat," Crowley said, looking at the prophet who licked his fingers as he put down the last cleaned-off rib. "Having fun yet?"

He dropped the angel tablet on top of a book and walked to the table.

Kevin smiled at him. "Screw you."

"Am I seeing this?" Crowley said. "How'd you figure it out?"

"Dean suggested the secret knock," Kevin said. "He wouldn't've forgotten it."

Crowley rolled his eyes. "Fucking Hardy Boys."

"It was the way they acted, Crowley," Kevin said, the side of his mouth lifting a little. "I don't think, on their best day, Sam and Dean would go into town and get me a barbecued dinner." He looked at the demon. "Not when there are leftover burritos in the fridge."

Crowley closed his eyes. "So, my … demons … were too polite?"

Kevin thought about it, nodding after considering them. "Yeah."

"That's just fucking great, innit?"

"You know they're up to the third trial?" Kevin leaned back and looked at him. "They're going to shut the door on Hell. Sorry, all the doors."

"I'm not worried, kid," Crowley said. It wasn't quite the truth. He was extremely worried. But he wasn't about to lose the sale that easily.

Kevin picked up the half of the tablet that Crowley had given him, getting to his feet as he held it up. "You have no idea what's on this Demon tablet," he said quietly. "The power that you could've gotten – with this – if you weren't running around like a chicken with its head cut off –"

Crowley stared at him. "You think I can't make you tell?"

"I know you can't," Kevin said gently. "And you do too."

Where had this boy gained this confidence, Crowley wondered nervously. At what point had everything changed from his way or the highway? And why was he allowing it to happen?

"You know what? he said, swallowing the thoughts and the unease and the terror-tinged anger far down. "I've already won. I have the Angel tablet, you little shit!"

It boiled up again at the sight of Kevin's mouth, twitching in a barely repressed smile.

"And I've got deals and plans up the jacksy," he told the prophet. His hand flashed out, seizing Kevin's throat and tightening as he pushed the boy back and slammed him into the wall.

"And I don't –" He lifted the boy higher, feeling the cartilage giving beneath his palm, the bones grinding against each other beneath his fingers. "– need – you!"

Kevin watched the darkness close around his vision, his air gone, lungs aching, his windpipe being crushed as the vertebrae was pulverised. It didn't matter. He hadn't broken, hadn't given up. He could die at least with that knowledge.

His eyes snapped open as the pain vanished and the darkness was replaced with light, brilliant, pure, burning.

Crowley stared as the prophet's eyes filled with the light, his entire body lifting with the power of it, and the frequency making the glass in the cabin quiver in sympathy. The pain and the violent concussion came together, sending him flying backwards across the cabin, hands and face burning and crackling as Kevin vanished. It wasn't possible, the thought screamed through his mind. No one was guarding the prophet, not any more. He lay on his back, writhing with the agony coruscating through his body.

NOT FUCKING POSSIBLE!

Ignacio, Colorado

The light died and Dean turned around, seeing Kevin slumped in the armchair, eyes closed. He was too far to be able to tell if the kid was breathing or not, but he couldn't see a discernible rise or fall in the narrow chest.

Metatron stepped close to the chair, looking down. It had been a long time since he'd done this, he thought, demanded the power, received it through himself. A long, long time. And they would find him. Unless he was quick.

He laid his hand over Kevin's chest, calling and reaching and feeling it flow through him. The souls in Heaven were the ultimate force of creativity, pure and untainted, powerful and capable of anything. It flowed through his hand, through the fabric of the boy's clothing, through the skin of his body and inside, lighting him gently and repairing and replacing everything that had been damaged, had been hurt or torn or broken. God's design. That every cell knew how it should be, could replicate itself flawlessly.

Metatron stepped back, watching the boy's chest rise and fall steadily, watching his pulse beat strongly in the hollow at the base of his throat, watching the soul recharge the body.

"Is that it?" Dean asked, his gaze flicking between Kevin and the angel.

"Give him a minute."

He turned, walking away through the narrow aisles between the books. Dean looked at Kevin for a moment longer, then followed him.

Metatron stood by the sink, checking the cleanliness of a glass against the early morning light that flooded through the window.

"How'd you get past Crowley's angel warding?"

The angel turned to him, one brow lifted. "I'm the Scribe of God," he chided. "I erased it."

"But you saw?" Dean pressed. "I mean, you caught up on everything that's been going on? All the crap that your brethren have been doing to humanity, all this time?"

Metatron glanced past him. "I saved the boy, didn't I?"

"But are you in?" Dean looked at him. With the angel – the scribe or whatever he was – on their side, they might have a snowball's. He didn't want another neutral party. "With us, I mean?"

The angel looked thoughtfully at him. "You really intend on closing the gates of Hell?"

Dean saw something in the angel's eyes, beyond the careful weighing up he could sense. The scribe knew more about the trials, about what would be asked of them than he was saying. He knew that he wouldn't say it. Not now. Perhaps not ever. Free will, he thought acerbically. You pays your money and you takes your chances. And he would. He would do it because Hell and Heaven had too much power.

"Seems like the thing to do, don't it?"

For a moment, he thought that angel would simply say yes. He should've known better, he thought later.

"It's your choice," Metatron said slowly. "That's what this has all been about – it's what is has always been about. The choices you make."

Dean felt the prickle on the back of his neck at the emphasis the angel put on the words.

"You are going to have to weigh this choice, Dean," Metatron said carefully. "Ask yourself … what is it going to take to do this? And what will the world be like, after it's done."

"Now, why does that sound like a trick question?" Dean asked him.

"It's not," Metatron said, filling the glass with water. "But it's not a simple question. Because this is not a simple task. And it will require more of you than you can imagine."

"Dean?" Sam called from behind the shelves and piles of books. "Dean!"

He turned reluctantly away from the angel and walked back to his brother, his gaze on the armchair where Kevin opened his eyes. He leaned on the arm, his hand curling around the boy's shoulder as Kevin looked up at him.

"Kevin? Hey," he said quietly, relief filling him. "Thought we lost you, kiddo."

Kevin shifted slightly, arching his back as he dragged out a broken slab of stone from the waistband of his jeans. He held it up, his gaze shifting between the stone and the man who was watching him.

"Second half of the tablet," he said, handing it to Dean. "And I got it."

Taking it, Dean looked down at the stone, his thoughts churning uncomfortably. Twenty minutes ago, he'd have been looking for the fucking champagne, he thought darkly. Now, he wasn't so sure.

Kevin looked up at him. "Third trial. I didn't tell Crowley."

Sam looked at him. "What is it?"

"To cure a demon," Metatron said from behind them, his voice weary.

All three turned to look at him. Kevin felt his relief, his joy, dissolving as he realised that everything he'd been through had been – perhaps not a waste – but certainly made redundant by the man standing behind the Winchesters.

"Yeah," he said. "Who are you?"

"I am the angel who is sworn to protect you, Kevin Tran, Prophet of the Word of God," he said quietly.

"I thought the archangels were all dead?" Kevin looked up at Dean questioningly. He'd been kidnapped and tortured by the King of Hell, healed by another angel, who'd since disappeared, dragged around, messed about with generally and he realised he wasn't really able to trust anyone but the two men standing near him now.

"He's not an archangel," Sam told him.

"He's the Messenger of God," Dean added, glancing around at Metatron. And one fucking cryptic customer, he thought to himself.

"You light up their screens with what you did?" Dean asked Metatron as he closed the door of the bedroom quietly.

"I don't think so," Metatron said. "But it's possible."

Dean glanced back at the door. "I left him out on his own once," he said, turning back to the angel. "I'm not doing it again, not without a guarantee of safety."

Metatron nodded. "There are no guarantees in life, Dean, but yes, I understand what you are asking." He looked away for a moment. "I will protect him, as you would, to the death."

That was about as good as he was going to get, Dean realised. He buried his misgivings about handing over that responsibility to someone else and nodded.

"Alright," he said, turning away. He turned back. "If you think there's even a chance that someone might've figured it out –"

"Yes," Metatron said hurriedly. "Even a chance."

Dean turned away again, and Metatron cleared his throat. "Dean, you and your brother –"

He turned back, more reluctantly this time. "Yeah?"

"You understand what is happening to him?"

"We think so," Dean hedged, not entirely sure about any of it. "Why was it him? Why not me?"

"I can't say for certain," Metatron said, looking through the books at the man sitting in the chair, head tipped back, eyes closed. "But I suspect he needed it more than you did."

Dean frowned. "That's bullshit. If God is so gung-ho on picking someone –"

"It's not just the matter of the one who can do the job," the angel said. "There is also the matter of redemption and forgiveness."

"He didn't choose to be a part of the games Heaven and Hell wanted to play," Dean said, the warning implicit in his voice.

"No more than you, or your father, or even, your mother," Metatron agreed. "Nevertheless, once the board was set, the choices – all of them – were your own."

Dean ducked his head. He'd told Sam the same thing.

"Free will means that no matter who tries to control us, we can – we are able – to choose a different path, to choose as wisely as we are capable of. There are choices you have made that even now, knowing the path they put you on, you would still make again, in the same way. You know that."

The angel sighed. "You are responsible for your choices. Your brother for his, but do not make the mistake of thinking that you have made your choices for the same reasons, or from the same viewpoint. Each of us needs the road that is uniquely suited to ourselves. And that applies to angels and demons and monsters, as much as humanity."

Dean looked up, the question already in his eyes and the soft flutter of wings filled his ears as the angel vanished.

I-70 E

Sam sat in the car, feeling the electric energy buzzing off his brother. Despite everything, they were back in the game, and Dean was leaning toward hope again.

He wasn't sure of that, for himself. He thought that the trials and the strengthening – what? power of God? purification? – was burning the blood from him. It left him with a feeling of … vulnerability suddenly. A feeling that he would be missing a part of him that he'd always felt, always known. Stockholm syndrome, he told himself acidly. He didn't want that poison in him. Didn't want the black rage or the knowledge that if so much as one drop of demon blood ever passed his lips again, it would be all over. He wanted to be clean. He wanted to be free.

But the feeling persisted. And he knew why. Once he was free – clean – normal, he thought, derisively, it would be all on him. There would be not a single excuse to blame for his decisions, for his choices, for his actions. No good intentions as the demon-driven superman of the west. No possible reasons for failure. It would all be on him. Just Sam.

The thought was … daunting. He wasn't sure if he was strong enough to handle that. Wasn't sure if he was capable of bearing the burdens they did without the ready-made fallback. It's not your fault, Sam. You didn't have a choice, Sam. It wasn't you, Sam.

The memories were still coming, some little more than a moment, some detailed and painful. All of them revolving around the man who sat next to him, driving them through the night. Their father had bled and died to protect them, but it was his brother that filled his memories … teaching him, comforting him, teasing him, beating him, letting him win, laughing with him … crying with him. Dean filled the years as John Winchester couldn't. He hadn't been there, really been there, present in mind, body and soul, enough. But Dean, he'd been there through it all.

He knew that when he'd run from things, it'd been the spectre of his brother's disappointment in him that had been chasing him. Knew that when he looked back on the choices he'd made, it was his brother's face, filled with an aching despair at those decisions, that he saw. Knew that when he'd decided to do the trials, at that crossroads moment when there'd still been time to find another hellhound, he had chosen with the need to prove to his brother that he was worthy, that he could be trusted, that he still deserved the love that had kept him safe his whole life. It'd been hopelessly naïve, he knew. Hopelessly hopeful. But it still drove him on.

Watching the road, his blood fizzing slightly in his veins, Dean felt the melancholy from the man sitting beside him as readily as he felt the fluctuating temperature differences in his brother. He couldn't stop to ask about the thoughts Sam was entertaining, the promise of him recovering, really recovering, was still too new to put down.

"Cure a demon," he said suddenly, knuckles whitening as his hands gripped the wheel, needing to say it out loud, needing to hear it out loud. "Ignoring the fact that I don't actually know what that means, if we do this – if we do this, you get better, right? I mean, you stop trying to cough up a lung and-and bumping into furniture?"

Sam looked at him. "I feel better, yeah, just having a direction to move in."

"Well, good 'cause where we headed doesn't sound like a picnic," Dean said, his tone much more subdued.

That was true, Sam thought. "Well, we're heading somewhere," he said slowly. "The end."

A nervous laugh tickled the back of Dean's throat and he swallowed against it, knowing it was a reaction, an old habit, to laugh off those moments when the truth suddenly shot out into the light and the only choice you had was to laugh or to live with it.

He looked back at the road and swore inwardly as his foot hit the brake. The lump in the middle of the road was human-sized and human-shaped and he was doing eighty. The brakes locked, sending the car across to the other side of the highway, clouds of smoke pouring from the rubber as he yanked the wheel around and stopped a few feet from the man lying there in his headlights.

Throwing open the door, he faltered as he recognised the face that lifted to look at him, blood obscuring half that familiar visage. "Cas?!"

The angel pressed his hand tightly over the wounds in his stomach, staring at Dean.

"A little help here," Castiel said tiredly.