Castiel, when Dean finally met the angel, was strangely adorable. He looked like a puppy who had been kicked often but was still very much loyal to his owner. It was strange. And the weirdest thing was that he had these, well, puppy dog eyes that seemed entirely natural.
Sam had taken one look between the angel who was supposed to save Dean from hell and his brother, and mentally started howling with laughter. Finally! He had some payback on his damn brother for all the times he made fun of him and Gabriel!
"So...you're an angel? Mind explaining why you broke all that glass?"
"I was attempting to talk to you. I thought you couldn't hear me?" he stated simply, though that last sounded more like a question and the way he cocked his head in confusion had Dean twitching.
Inwardly Sam really, really wished he could record this without Dean noticing. Until he remembered he could always show this to his boyfriend through the pensieve. Gabriel would likely get a kick out of the obvious instant attraction Dean had to this Castiel guy.
To be fair, Dean was a bigger sucker for dogs than even Sam was. It was why the puppy dog eye technique was so damn effective on his brother.
"Dean Winchester, heaven has..." started Castiel before Dean growled.
"What the hell did you just call me?" he hissed.
"Dean Winchester...?"
"My name," he stressed, "Is NOT Winchester. I haven't gone by that name in well over a decade and there's not a chance in hell I'm going to start using that son of a bitch's name now. Even Sam doesn't answer to that bastard's name."
Seeing Castiel's confusion, Sam took pity on him.
"Dean and I found something that we didn't agree with about John Winchester, and he nearly tried to kill Dean since he was eleven we've been living with our adoptive mother and father instead. We broke contact with John years ago after we found out something we couldn't forgive him for," clarified Sam.
"If you want to work with us, angel, then call us the Harvelle brothers. Otherwise we're just going to ignore anything you say and we'll happily tell heaven where to stuff their orders," said Dean with vehemence.
While the magical society had at least taken the hint once they changed their names, for some bizarre and very irritating reason the supernatural side of things hadn't gotten the same memo. It was a source of constant irritation for the brothers, since they had to keep correcting people about their last name.
Winchester was a name they would happily never take up again.
Fortunately it seemed this Castiel was willing to at least listen to them.
"Very well, Dean Harvelle. Heaven has sent me to retrieve you from the pit, but it seems someone beat me to Alistair's racks."
Dean openly snorted.
"Yeah, small problem with that plan. See I already filled my end of the contract two months into it, and someone gave me directions to a portal that lead out. The body Lilith killed was a fake so they didn't try to kill Sam again," he said amused.
Castiel blinked. This was clearly news to him, though it certainly explained why the demons hadn't tried very hard to keep the angels out. They must have figured something was up when they learned who they were sent down to retrieve.
"Heaven has a job for you, Dean."
He flared his wings out to prove he was in fact an angel, since he was curious why Dean hadn't challenged his claim. Dean did not look impressed. At all. He felt annoyed and somewhat disappointed.
"Well that was a colossal waste of time," said Dean, getting into the car.
"Did you see him flare his wings? That was rather pointless. I mean we knew he was an angel, so why did he bother with that display?" said Sam.
"How much you wanna bet he's going to be listening in to our talks from now on?"
"Only an idiot bets against you Dean," deadpanned Sam.
There were times when he bet against Dean. He learned early on that such an idea was idiotic at best, and pointless at worst. Dean had the devil's own luck, a byproduct of the fact his luck had been so horrendous as Harry.
And since merging with his past life, that luck had shot up from 'ridiculously lucky' to what Dean would likely call 'god-mode'. Which meant anytime he gambled he was more likely to break even than not, and when playing the higher stakes game he would win and win big.
More than one time he had gone to Vegas and come back with a couple million in cold hard cash. The only reason he hadn't exercised his luck to it's full extent was because he didn't want it to spectacularly backfire him at the worst possible time.
He was annoying, but he wasn't a fool. Good luck like that always ran out and he would prefer it not to be within the near future. He was happy with a few million rather than the big bucks.
Still, they did have one thing that they learned from Castiel.
Heaven was definitely up to something if they had gone into hell without checking to see if Dean was there first. If they really were interested in the brothers, then Castiel should have known their name was Harvelle and that Dean had been 'indisposed' for over three months yet had been seen frequently with Loki while his brother wasn't around. But the biggest factor was the fact Castiel didn't even look twice at the two pugs.
Even Gabriel had picked up on the fact that Hati and Skoll were hell hounds right off...though to be fair he had seen them before they took that smaller form. So the fact Castiel hadn't been wary around them said that Heaven wasn't entirely being truthful.
Dean had a feeling they wanted him to try and stop Lucifer from getting out...which was a pointless task once someone started breaking seals. And failing that they would likely try to force him to say yes to Micheal.
From what he had heard of the arch angel, he was more likely to tell Micheal to shove his sword where the sun didn't shine. The guy sounded like Percy, only worse.
"Well?" asked Gabriel once they got back to the house.
"Castiel is a pawn. And I'm starting to think that maybe Heaven isn't what it's cracked up to be," said Dean.
"Say what now?"
"He got the name wrong. And he flared his wings as if to prove he really was an angel when we already knew what he was. I think Castiel is just a front for whichever angel is behind the attack on hell, and that their information is extremely outdated. It was like dealing with Crowley all over again," said Sam.
"Crowley as in the demon Crowley, who currently rules over the crossroads?" said Gabriel, raising an eyebrow.
"Crow's cool. Which reminds me, I need to warn him that the angels will be a major pain in the ass now," said Dean, hitting the speed dial assigned to Crowley.
"WHAT?"
"Did I wake you up or something?"
"As a matter of fact there's been a recent audit of all crossroad deals for the past hundred years as a result of you slipping through hell before they knew it. Which means I've been forced to go through each one just to confirm that they're still suffering eternal damnation or chose demonhood," deadpanned Crowley.
"Well I have even more good news that's sure to make your day!"
"Fuck you."
"The angels are active on Earth now. Don't know why they think I was on the rack for four months though," said Dean.
Dean cheerfully put it on speaker so Gabriel and Sam could hear Crowley's cursing from the other end. Gabriel was holding his sides from laughing so hard.
"Are you just telling me this to piss me off, or as an honest warning?" asked Crowley irate once he got over his anger.
"More of the latter, but a little of the former," said Dean.
"Thanks for the heads up. Explains this damn audit...coincidentally I will be throwing fireballs at your damn creature form the next time we meet," said Crowley.
"Fair enough."
Crowley hung up on him. He hadn't been joking about the audit, and he still had fifty years to go.
"I can't believe you're friends with a crossroads demon," said Gabriel, once he got over his giggle fit.
"They trust each other because they know they can't trust each other. So long as they agree to be friendly enemies it all works out. How did you think I got my hell hounds?" said Sam.
"Bear," said Gabriel flatly.
"Being frienemies is complicated but never dull," said Dean grinning.
Dean was woken up in the middle of the night by an unlikely source.
Mort it's... fuck, it's four in the morning. What's wrong?
Lilith has broken the second seal, the Witnesses have risen, which means that ghosts who should rightfully be in their afterlife have been pulled back. And since you merged with Harry...
I have to deal with his as well as mine. Shit.
On the plus side, now is the perfect time to exercise some of your power as Death's Hand.
Death's Hand?
It's the current title for anyone who does my work for me when I can't because of the rules.
Well, could you come up with a better name for it? So what sort of ability do I get?
First one is relatively simple. Soul Sight. Channel some of your magic into your eyes and you can see the state of someone's soul. Good, evil, you'll know what sort of person or thing they are just by looking at them. The second, which is the one you'll be using until someone reverses the spell after twelve hours have passed, is the ability to remove spells from souls that keep them here. It won't work on the souls you usually encounter, but in events like these it helps greatly.
Can you implant the knowledge of how to do this? I'm too tired to actually learn any other way.
This will hurt. A lot.
I can handle pain.
Mort placed a hand on Dean's forehead. He grimaced but didn't cry out. Harry had gone through too much pain to give anyone the satisfaction of hearing him scream. Something he passed on to Dean when they merged. He barely managed to keep his knees from buckling.
I did say it would hurt.
Dean nodded, unable to speak.
Get some sleep Dean. When you wake up you'll remember this...just warn Bobby to keep salt and iron on hand.
Dean sat down on his bed and immediately curled up against Bear. He was asleep in seconds, and the pain abated as he snored away.
He was going to be in for a rough couple of days.
"So Mort showed up and gave you another upgrade?" said Bobby.
"More like gave me an info-dump on how to use the upgrade I got from leaving hell," said Dean.
"Better than nothin'. He say anything else?"
"He said that Lilith broke the second seal. Rising of the Witnesses, he called it. I think the only reason he told me is because this Rising involves souls that should have stayed where they were," said Dean.
"At least he's helping. Which is more than can be said of him normally," said Bobby.
"Mort's tied by the rules. He can't interfere unless it involves the dead or necromancy. At least he's willing to warn us about homicidal ghosts," said Dean defensively.
"Son, I would rather have a sporadic source than none at all. I ain't complaining about your reaper friend. Now, I have a couple of hunter friends who haven't been replying about this whole heaven and hell business. Did Mort say anything else about these ghosts?"
"Only that you should keep salt and iron handy. Sam and I can go check on your friends, but only if you look up the counter spell and wait for us to get back before you leave the panic room."
"Do I look like a damn idjit? I'll find the counterspell while you check on the others and get the word out."
"Hang on... I'll call Mom and get the network on full blast warning about this," said Sam.
An hour later any hunter who knew of a ghost-proof house had gone to ground. No one wanted to deal with past failures coming back to kill them. The few who weren't on the Hunter Tree (what Dean flippantly called the network of hunters that lived in the US, most if not all of which had been to the Roadhouse at least once in their career) were warned by those who were.
It had been Dean's idea to start a phone tree. And now it was time to put the thing to the test.
Ellen hung up her cordless phone, and immediately grabbed her cell. Since she was the only one with access to the tree, she was the only one who could activate the damn thing.
She dialed a specific sequence, one enchanted to call every number on the list.
All across the States, countless people answered their cell whether they were on a hunt or not.
"This is Ellen Harvelle. We have a report that someone has broken a special seal, one designed to bring back the ghosts of all those you've failed to save as a hunter. Repeat, homicidal ghosts of people who were killed during a hunt or were victims during one are coming back, and they WILL kill you. If you know of a ghost-proof area or a safe zone, get to it immediately. Until the all clear is sent, assume that the spell causing this mess is still active."
The minute she ended the calls, nearly every single hunter started loading up on salt and iron. Dean had, at some point out of boredom, marked states where hunters had set up known safe houses against things like demons or ghosts. Anyone who had been to the Roadhouse tended to memorize that map in case of emergencies, or had it marked on their GPS.
It was time to put it to use.