-Summary: It's the end of the world and they've got one last card to play. Castiel sends Dean back: back before everything. Now he has time to stop what's coming, but no friggin' clue how to do it. Time travel should really come with a manual. TIMELINE AU

-A/Ns: Welcome back to Fixing-The-Impala Part II! Thank you to everyone who left thoughts, commentary, all out screaming about how they still haven't found the bunker key (Oh, oh, oh, you poor things. You think it's going to be that easy? You think I'm going to be a *nice* author? Not a chance ;)

-Chapter Warnings: Sam's asking the real tough questions now, and Dean's stalling on more than just his answers.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

The Road So Far (This Time Around)

Season 2: Chapter 9

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Fixing the Impala – building all but the engine pretty much from scratch – took four days. Sam was impressed it didn't take longer, but Dean was nothing if not dedicated. And he'd always been a good teacher. He had a way of making mounting tasks seem easy, just step by step until you're done.

It was too bad he hadn't figured out how to apply that mentality to life, or the daunting task they faced on the horizon.

The four days passed in rolling waves banter and laughter-filled highs, often juxtaposed by lows filled with difficult conversations Dean struggled to get through. But he did get through them. Some were easier than others. It helped that Sam rarely asked for information outright. He'd get Dean talking on a somewhat safe topic that would inevitably turn dark, because very few moments in their life weren't a catalyst for, or the result of, something much more devastating. Those were the hard moments: the true lows. Sam wouldn't push, but he wouldn't let Dean off the hook, either. He just worked in silence on the Impala while his brother figured out the best way to admit something he'd really rather Sammy didn't know.

Eventually Dean would cave or figure it out, because he'd made a promise and he was trying. Sam would keep a tight grip on his immediate reaction, doing his own part to lessen how hard this was for his brother and, honestly, for himself. He'd ask questions, get Dean to clarify, usually concerning context. Sometimes he would ask what they were going to do to change it. Dean rarely had answers to those questions, but Sam didn't stop asking them.

The current silence was one of the longest so far, and it was a really bad time for it, too.

"Dean?"

There it was, Dean thought from the backseat, where he was laying the carpet out on the floor pans and securing it in place. The seats had survived pretty well. Dean had stripped the leather to clean the blood and buff any scratches, but they'd been lucky not to need to replace it. That shit had to be custom ordered. The carpeting was still a custom job, ordered earlier in the week on their first supply run, a rush job that had the owner of the small, hole-in-the-wall autoshop practically clicking his heels together over, since it was probably half his yearly profit.

But back to his brother currently bitching at him from the hood of the car, where he was re-assembling the engine just as Dean had shown him. He'd made the kid take it apart by himself too, just so he'd known what each piece was, what it did, what it looked like undamaged versus damaged, and how it connected in the overall machine. He was going to make his brother a capable car guy, even if he couldn't make him an actual car guy.

Sam's recovery gained leaps and bounds over the four days of light labor. He still got the shakes on occasion, despite his best efforts to hide them from his brother. But his appetite was improving, his strength returning with every task he conquered on the Impala and every forced break Dean made him take. By the fourth day, he was almost back to himself.

"Dean."

His bitchface-ing, over-demanding, younger-brother-but-I'm-still-smarter-than-you, self. Yipee.

That was Sam's warning tone. The one that meant his brother was seriously starting to worry about what was - or wasn't - going through Dean's head. Not that Dean had been expecting anything else given their current conversation. Turns out, when someone asks, 'Gee, how did you handle that round of torture with a demon so well?' they're somewhat entitled to freak out when you don't answer them back.

While he was still trying to figure out how (if, Dean. Be honest) he was going to answer, Sam pulled away from his work, all sounds of the reassembly chore coming to an end. Dean knew he had to bite the bullet and soon, or Sam would come marching around to his side of the car. Then he'd have to have this conversation while looking his brother in the face.

"I spent four months in Hell," he managed to blurt out, without a lot of thought on consequences and whatever the opposite of consequences was. Silver linings? Nope, forty years on the rack certainly didn't come with any of those.

The silence stretched to cringe-worthy lengths before Dean found his brother marching around the car anyway (well, not so much marching as approaching almost cautiously) and stopping just outside the newly paneled door to stare at him with an almost unreadable expression. Whatever that muddled look was supposed to mean, Sam was very clearly tortured by his newest admission.

Dean was getting tired of seeing variations of that face, more and more harrowed with each newly dropped bombshell.

Sam started to speak, then stopped and had to swallow whatever had lodged itself in his throat at the thought of his brother stretched across a rack, enduring far more than what Azazel had dished out at that cabin, and enduring it for months.

"How?" It was all he could get out, but it was the most important to him. How did his brother end up in Hell in the first place? With what Dean had told him so far, it just didn't make sense. Heaven needed him as a weapon. Had Hell dragged him under to keep him out of the angel's reach? And where had Sam been when this was going down? "I thought you said Heaven and Hell needed us. Why would they let you die?"

Dean sat back against the freshly re-upholstered leather, staring out the new windshield of his baby at the rest of the salvage yard beyond, before he closed his eyes against it all and took several deep, steeling breaths.

"They needed me in Hell to break the First Seal." He refused to look at Sam as he got back to work. Work was better than breaks and breathing and definitely better than looking at his brother's positively wrecked expression. Work filled the silence and distracted him from the void in his chest that didn't exist anymore, but somehow he knew was still there anyway. "I told you, we both help start the end of the world, Sammy. My first gig was breaking on the rack. Picking up a blade and making others bleed instead."

"What?" The word was breathless, not out of disbelief or doubt, but out of pain. "That doesn't- You can't be the only- Why?"

"To break the first lock on Lucifer's cage, a Righteous Man has to spill blood in Hell." He said it bitterly, practically spitting out the title he had never wanted, nor ever thought he deserved. Maybe he actually had before he'd sold his soul, but he certainly hadn't after everything that came next. It had grated on his skin like sandpaper to hear Cas refer to him as such again and again.

Sam's brow furled, classic Sasquatch mind racing to fill in the blanks his brother wasn't saying. "How… How does a righteous man end up in Hell?"

His brother not answering him was all the answer he needed. Weight settled in the bottom of his stomach like he'd swallowed a medicine ball. Sam knew the answer before he asked the question, but he had to ask it anyway. He had to know, because he had to be wrong.

"Dean, what did you do?"

-o-o-o-

Bobby was in the study, pouring over an ancient tomb written in a language barely even recognized as a language anymore, when Sam came into the house. The way he threw open the screen door and stormed into the kitchen spoke of anger and urgency. But the way he came to a halt almost immediately inside the threshold, standing, listless, in the room and staring Bobby's way made the old hunter think he was more overwhelmed and lost than anything else.

"Sam?" he queried pretty quietly for his usual gruffness, eyebrows raised and research set aside for the moment.

"Did you know?" the boy croaked, then swallowed heavily and tried again. "About Dean's deal?"

Bobby gave a rough sigh, pulling off his baseball cap and scratching at his thinning hair. Damn that boy, sometimes. "He hasn't done it yet, Sam."

Sam's look turned, if possible, even more despairing than it had a moment ago. They both knew that yet was kind of the key word, there.

"I won't let him," the giant of a man said suddenly, eyes hardening with resolve as he stared at the old hunter, though Bobby was fairly certain he wasn't actually wat Sam was seeing. "He's not making that mistake twice. I'm not worth the end of the world."

With that, Sam stomped back out of the kitchen, screen door slamming once more in his wake. Bobby collapsed into his chair with a loud, embittered sigh. He was too old for this crap, and those boys both need a kick in the pants if worth is where they both kept going anytime someone made a choice based on love and not logic.

-o-o-o-

Sam came charging out of the house only minutes after he'd gone charging in, and Dean prepared himself for the reaming of a life time. It would probably be very similar to the first time Sam had figured out what he'd agreed to. Of course, he knew he'd gotten of fairly light for that, given that the deed was done, there was nothing Sammy could do about it, and he didn't care what it cost.

This was going to be infinitely harder because asking for permission was sure as shit more difficult than begging for forgiveness.

"You are going to promise me, here and now, that you will not sell your soul for me."

Sam's stance was something out of a damn action movie, featuring a boss villain or some shit like that. All wide legs and power-house shoulders, offset with tightly clenched fists that made his arm muscles bulge. That brown gaze was firm and terrifying and could have broken world leaders.

Kid would have made a damn amazing lawyer.

Dean managed so far as to stop his work, stare at his superstar of a brother, and not much else. He almost got around to opening his mouth, but nothing came out, which just left him awkwardly staring Sammy's way with a half open jaw that clacked shut almost immediately. He looked away.

"Are you kidding me?!"

The man from the future winced at the furious anger in his brother's voice. "I know, Sammy, okay? I know! But that doesn't- I can't- I-"

"Dean, no."

The older Winchester was looking away again, a weird expression on his face that Sam recognized instantly. That 'I did something you're not gonna be happy about' look Dean got where he wouldn't quite meet Sam's eyes and screwed his face up something funny. Sam's shoulders dropped with realization and he lost all forward momentum, practically sagging away from his brother and the car.

"You already thought about doing it, didn't you? Back in Wyoming."

Dean struggled with that face for another moment before he reluctantly met his brother's demanding, disbelieving gaze. "Only as a last resort. I had some other, uh, equally stupid ideas to try first."

Sam knew Dean was trying, however poorly, to lighten the mood, but this really wasn't the kind of thing he was ready to joke about.

"You promise me, right now. If I die – at any time – you let me stay dead." Dean immediately opened his mouth (probably to argue), but Sam wouldn't let him. "I mean it, Dean. I'm okay dying if it means we don't end the world or start the apocalypse."

When his brother just stared at him – straight through him- with eyes as wide as they'd been when he mimicked his angel the day before, Sam finally let the disappointment – in himself, in Dean, in destiny, in everything – show through on his face. "Don't you think that's worth it?"

Dean looked away, past the brand new windshield and the world around them and the timeline they were currently riding out. He was thinking of the future, of a world without his brother that he had tried so hard to navigate and had failed.

"I don't know how to live without you, Sam."

The taller man sighed at the slump of Dean's shoulders and the lost look in his distant gaze. He knew that, now. He hadn't before – he had majorly underestimated his brother's dependency on him, on this life – but he knew it now. He understood it, too, even if he was the more independent one by nature. So, Sam tried to think of a world for his brother without him in it. He wasn't the only one in Dean's life who loved him, after all. "You'll still have Bobby, and Cas, if he-"

"Cas leaves."

"What?" The response was so rapid-fire that it sounded like Dean had known Sam's words were coming. Known they were coming, and then knew what happened next. Sam swallowed, suddenly very aware of just how difficult an optimistic conversation was going to be with someone who knew the future. Who had lived a future where apparently Sam was gone and Dean had learned firsthand what that was like. "When?"

Because Dean had definitely given him his death date: 2016, in a graveyard facing something called the Darkness. But there was no misjudging that look on his brother's face, even if he kept glancing off in the distance, body language subconsciously shying away from Sam. He stayed quite for a really long time, eventually going back to pulling and pushing and stretching the carpet across the floor pans. Sam let him, leaning against the fixed frame of Dean's baby.

Finally, when he'd found the right words, the man from the future morosely admitted, "We win. We stop the apocalypse, but you… You go into the cage with Lucifer."

Sam managed not to suck in that sharp breath of air his lungs tried to vacuum right up. He'd sort of figured, though the details had been off. There were really only so many ways he could bite the big one in this world Dean came from, right?

"Only way we could take him down," Dean continued, shaking his head and Sam could still see the weight of the decision he carried with him, more than five years later. "And I- I couldn't do anything to get you back."

He stayed quiet as Dean kept at the carpeting, silent, angry, still grieving and still resentful over the death of a brother who was standing, very much alive, less than a foot from him. Sam stayed quiet because he knew there was more to that story, and his brother would tell him when he was ready.

"Cas got his wings back-" the broken hunter muttered, suddenly digging into the work a lot harder, a lot fiercer. It wasn't hard to hear the betrayal in his brother's voice or the anger and loss in his movements. Dean had never been a hard one to read, even ten years older. All Sam had to do was bite his tongue and try not to ask how the angel had lost his wings in the first place. "-and went back to heaven."

Well, that explained some of the roller coaster of emotion he'd seen in Dean, from that first time he'd mentioned the name in the car hightailing it out of Jericho, to just the last twenty four hours of stories, both good and bad. The way his brother clearly missed the angel, to flickers of regret when he talked about him, to the clenched teeth of frustration and bad blood, and what Sam was now realizing were the old scars of betrayal.

"I was alone," Dean spit out, still angry but still just as broken. "I tried the apple pie life, Sam. You made me promise to try, so I did. I went native, took a stab at normal, and I sucked at it."

It wasn't clear what made it pop into his head so readily – apparently hanging on the sidelines for weeks now, waiting to be remembered – but the first thought into Sam's head was that little boy wrapping his arms around Dean so tightly, orange light spread out beneath them in flickers of pure, roiling happiness, and the brunette, lounging on a picnic blanket in the Baku's dreamland. The question was out of his mouth before he had time to think about whether or not it was really the right moment to be asking his brother such an emotionally charged question.

"Lisa and Ben Braeden," Dean confirmed with a nod and a flicker of a smile, his previously brutal efforts against the carpet stalling as memories flickered across his face. They seemed as happy as they was sad, and Sam was suddenly dead certain this was about more than just some woman and her kid. "They were… They were awesome people. That kid is awesome."

And if Sam heard 'my kid', well, he doubted he was wrong.

"They took me in, put up with my shit. They…" The hunter struggled with his words, visibly swallowing back the emotion attached to them. "They're probably the only thing that kept me from eating my gun."

Sam didn't respond right away, leaning away from his brother to settle against the frame of the Impala. Dean went back to work, gentler and steadier than before. Hazel eyes stared up at the blue sky, birds passing high above, and the warm sun of a South Dakota late spring. Sam thought about a life for his brother with a beautiful woman and a son who loved him. A life that didn't have Sam in it, but wasn't all bad.

"Dean," he began softly, neck still craned back and eyes focused on that endless blue and, maybe, the Heaven that lay beyond. He thought about not saying it, about how it would sound to anyone not in their life. But this was his brother, and he deserved to hear it. "If eating a bullet keeps you from bring me back…"

The sounds of labor slowed before stopping completely. Sam pushed off the car, turning to face him fully. Dean's eyes were unreadable, fiercely locked on his brother, giving away nothing but the intensity of whatever that emotion was.

"I don't want to die. I don't want you to die," Sam emphasized, shoving his hands in his pockets, gangly arms bent at the elbow. "I'd rather you go find Lisa and your son. Or tell Cas to screw Heaven and stay."

He thought he caught a light huff from the statue of a man, but Sam couldn't say if that was in response to calling Ben as he saw it, or telling an angel to suck it. Didn't matter, either way; at least he knew his brother was hearing him.

"If it means not bringing me back, not starting the apocalypse, or you going to Hell…" Sam was not above turning on those puppy eyes his brother so famously gave him crap for, and he used them here to their full, pleading extent. "I'd rather you be in Heaven with me, than both of us here, starting the end of the world."

When Dean didn't say anything, just turned away painfully slowly to stare out the windshield again, Sam sighed, adding, "I know it's not what you want to hear-"

"No, it sure as hell isn't, Sammy," Dean interrupted, voice cracking as he did so, but something in that tone screamed hurting, not angry, so Sam stayed quiet until those watery green eyes finally found him again. "But you're not wrong. It's probably what I need to hear."

He took in a deep, measured breath, sitting back on the newly buffed leather, hands on his thighs. Despite providing no upper body support, those arms somehow looked like they were the only thing keeping him holding on.

"I promise."

It came with no fanfare. Dean went back to work almost before the final syllable was out, as if he hadn't spoken to begin with. It left Sam standing there for a solid thirty seconds, wondering if he hallucinated it.

But then Dean was talking again, tucking the last of the carpet into the corner of the rear driver's side door, trimming the edges with his box cutter. "I won't bring you back if it happens." He tossed the scraps of material through the far side door, a chunk catching Sam in the thigh (very much on purpose, he was certain). "But I'm not letting it happen."

Sam offered a hand to his brother, who took it readily and clambered out of the car. Dean dusted off his hands on filthy jeans while Sam offered a weak smile.

"I'm not letting it happen either," he agreed with firm resolution. "Trust me, I'd rather stay alive, avoid the entire scenario."

The man from the future nodded, the set in his shoulders as stubborn as his brother's. "Right. What are you doing, slacking off while I do all the work? Back to it. Mush! Let's see how you did with the engine."

With an eye roll, Sam let the change of topic slide and followed him around to the front of the car.

-o-o-o-

Dean declared the Impala done the next day. It could not have come fast enough, in Dean's opinion. Not only to get his Baby back in gleaming condition, but also to be done with the open-wound that was telling Sam whatever the hell he wanted to know. It had been ninety six hours of pain and bad memories.

Well, that wasn't completely true. Sam had asked about as many happy times as he had awful ones. Dean told him all about Jo and Ellen, that he'd get to meet them soon enough, whenever Ellen called so they'd have an excuse to go to the Roadhouse. He told him about Ash in all his mulleted glory, Charlie the redheaded little sister they never knew they wanted, Jody and her kids and that damn awkward dinner they'd shared over Alex's apparent soon-to-be-popped cherry.

Sam couldn't quite wrap his head around how much of a family they were going to have.

Once Baby was up and purring, a quick test run under her belt for groceries and celebratory beer, Dean declared the rest of the day free from work of any kind. Which, apparently, meant they were waiting for the following day to find a suitable building for the summoning. Sam, who was looking forward to meeting the Cas of Dean's stories but still very much on the fence about the actual angel they'd be meeting in the next twenty four hours, didn't fight much. He could use a free evening to do some more research (which went nowhere once Dean saw what he was doing, confiscated the laptop, hid it where Sam never did find it, and plopped a freshly opened beer in front of him instead, declaring a night of celebration, not work.)

Bobby, again, asked why they needed to find another location to begin with. Not that he was actually opposed to summoning Castiel elsewhere. In fact, if Dean hadn't said anything, the old man would probably have protested bringing an angel to his house in the first place. What he was caught up on was the fact that Dean insisted they find someplace safer, which, for the paranoid hunter, was just insulting.

There was no place safer.

Insult aside, the need for security more extreme than Bobby's panic room and heavily warded house was worrying. He wasn't the only one thinking it, either. Sam's harried glances his way confirmed that the younger Winchester had picked up on it too.

Dean just skirted the question, saying angels tended to make big entrances and he didn't think Bobby wanted to deal with home insurance claims for lightning strikes inside the house. The look the two had exchanged after that bit of information damn near broke the apprehension scale.

So they spent the evening watching movies on Bobby's old TV, the three of them comically squished on the couch together (after Dean declared the desk chair unsuitable for movie night, given that it squeaked every time the gruff hunter leaned back). They had a near endless supply of beer, popcorn, and a dinner break for burgers on the grill with all the fixings. Sam wouldn't lie, it was the most fun he'd had in months, and it went a long way to soothe the hollow weight in his chest. It was a twisted combo of the mountain of death and destruction looming on the horizon, the ache in his veins still fading from a week of withdrawal recovery, and the still fresh loss of his father. He was pretty sure the evening was as much a balm for his brother as it was for him, so the studious hunter let himself relax and enjoyed the company of the family he still had left.

-o-o-o-

The next day they began the hunt for Dean's perfect summoning building, roaming around the outskirts of the Sioux Falls area in search of something the man from the future deemed worthy, all the while testing Baby's new build and reassembled engine. She purred like a charm all over the county as they darted from one abandoned farmhouse to the next. Dean crossed a lot of them unnecessarily off the list, giving vague, half-formed reasons for why they didn't fit the bill. Bullshit, in Bobby's opinion, but Sam seemed more willing to go along with his brother, who thought this summoning had to meet very specific qualifications.

Bobby was pretty sure he was just procrastinating, but what did he know?

Dean insisted they were looking for something he would know when he saw it (and apparently only he, given just how many dilapidated warehouses, farms, barns, and houses, they visited in the span of one day). The sun was back on the decline by the time Sam finally had enough and called Dean on his hedging. As it just so happened, their fearless leader found the very next building they pulled up to perfect for an angel summoning. Sam rolled his eyes, Dean played it off like this was his intent the entire time, and Bobby grumbled about how he should have stayed at the house, where he could have been as equally useless to this endeavor and at least gotten his own shit done for the day. He had bills and a life, after all.

Both he and Sam stayed in the car for the last building search, having seen too many old, falling apart structures for one lifetime, let alone one day. As Dean walked back towards the car, a smile on his face and thumbs up, Sam and Bobby started climbing out of the Impala. But the man from the future just shook his head and climbed back into the driver's seat before either man was fully out of the car

With a curious frown, Sam clambered back in, giving Bobby another thing to grump about. He was too old to be squished in the back seat of this damn muscle car. Sam, on the other hand, was staring at his brother as he started up the engine and pulled away from the building he'd just (finally) deemed worthy.

"We're leaving?"

"Can't summon him right now," Dean replied, following the long dirt road back to civilization. "It's the middle of the day. We gotta wait till night."

The reasoning was twofold. And by that, he meant there was one reason, mostly fabricated, he was willing to tell his brother and Bobby, and one far more legitimate reason he was keeping to himself. The first was that it had been night when he and Bobby originally summoned the angel, and since Time was a picky bitch, they should stick as closely to the original summoning as possible. Dean had even played around with the idea of driving out to Pontiac in search of that old barn, just to give the bitch even less reason to mess this up for them. But he'd decided that was a waste of gas, ultimately, even if the extra day of driving to get there was a tempting excuse to put it off one more day.

He was nervous about this, damn it, which was just ridiculous. It was Cas, for Pete's sake.

"Is that why the building had to be so specific?" Sam asked once Dean offered up reason numero uno on why they needed such precise conditions for the summoning. The taller of the two brothers rolled his eyes, exasperated that his brother couldn't have just said so. He'd wasted half the day stalling, was what he'd really done.

"I summoned yer angel with you?" Bobby asked over Sam's grievances, giving Dean a wide eyed look in the rear view mirror.

"Uh…Yes, and yes. Though, you were unconscious for most of it." Dean winced as soon as the words were out of his mouth, and Bobby's eyes rose even higher. "Don't worry, I'm sure he won't knock you out this time."

The two once more overlapped their replies, exclamations ranging from 'what the hell, boy, I thought yer angel was on our side!' to 'You said he wasn't dangerous in that sense, Dean.' The hunter just shrugged, pulling onto the highway leading back to Bobby's house.

"He will be on our side. But he doesn't start that way. And he's not my angel."

But Sam was hardly focused on that little detail (and, also, yeah right). Instead, he shook his head, eyes wide, as he realized something he hadn't before, even with everything Dean had told him about Cas starting out on the wrong side of things. His mind drifted to the container of holy oil Pastor Jim had supplied them, and suddenly he wondered what exactly it was for.

"Are we…. Are we summoning Cas against his will?"

Dean fidgeted in the driver's seat, a surefire tell that yes, yes they were. "He isn't answering my prayers. This is the only other way."

"Prayers?" Sam echoed at the same time as Bobby went back to his grumblings, only this time they were a series of increasingly descriptive expletives.

The old hunter finally harrumphed, arms crossed in the back seat, quickly realizing he was missing some key pieces of information back there. "Exactly how dangerous is this?"

"If everything goes according to plan?" Dean glanced sidelong at his brother, then back on the road. "Not at all."

"And if it doesn't go to plan?" Bobby asked gruffly, because when in hell had anything having to do with the Winchesters ever gone to plan? And he was asking, knowingly, years before the Apocalypse would join that list of things.

"Uh…" Dean's silence was answer enough, really. "He could kill us all?"

Sam and Bobby exchanged alarmed expressions. Dean hadn't mentioned that on their way back from Blue Earth. The intelligent, near-college-graduate was very certain Dean's worst case scenario had still involved them all living through it.

"He won't though. It's more likely he'll go back to heaven and tattle-tale. Which would be worse, because it'll be Zachariah he'll report to, and that pompous bag of dicks won't hesitate to serve us all up on a silver platter."

The alarmed expression on Bobby's face became something closer to panic. No, maybe not panic. Hell no? That was it. It was definitely an expression that had once been "uh….kaaaay" and was now "oh, Hell no. No, no, nope, no way, just no."

"We, uh…. We sure this is the right move?" the old hunter asked cautiously, dread in his voice manifesting itself into several dozen angry, silent 'idjits'. Sam couldn't blame him. He'd had a week of knowing all of this, and he still wasn't sure it was a good idea.

At least Dean was being honest about it, for once.

"We're gonna need him eventually," Dean reasoned back, releasing the wheel to rub at his sternum. "Besides, I want answers. God wouldn't give 'em up-" or if he had, then he took them away right afterward, the bastard- "so what choice do we have?"

"We could chose life," Bobby grumbled miserably from the back seat.

"Don't worry." Dean settled his hand back on the steering wheel, eyes focused straight ahead. "The plan is going to work."

And if it didn't, he could probably talk his way out of it. Not that that ever worked any other time in his life, of course. Dean was much better talking his way into trouble. But the one exception to that rule was Castiel. And given the warmth slowly building back up in his chest ever since the explosion, Dean was willing to bet that being three years early wasn't going to change it.

Which brought up the real reason for waiting until nightfall to summon Cas. If this did, for some reason, go tits up, the fallout was gonna be major. His only hope of containment would be trapping Cas before he could make the run back to Heaven. Hence, Pastor Jim's holy oil. Which could very likely piss the angel off, resulting in Plan C not exactly going to plan.

Honestly, despite Dean's confident words, there were a million ways this could go wrong. Castiel had been a company man before he met Dean. Towed the line, thumped that bible, believed in the Plan. Worse, he believed his superiors were still getting updates on that Plan from God, and not just going off script for their own glorification and means to an end.

If he wasn't able to convince Cas that he was from the future, that the angel's future should be with him and his brother, that his place was by their side rather than in Heaven, then they were going to have a very serious problem.

But since he hadn't gotten any help from God, there was still a bubbling warmth in his chest that should really be concerning him, and he was pretty sure he couldn't do the rest of this alone anymore without losing his mind (given that his dad's inevitable death was all it had taken for him to run off and dare God to start participating or else), it was time to call for backup. He had questions that needed answering, and they all needed someone a little more familiar with the rules. Dean was at the end of his rope trying to figure this out misstep by misstep.

Plus, he missed his friend; he couldn't deny that.

So, there they were, several hours later, a little nuclear family of odds and ends, misfits and outliers, about to summon their missing member into a ring of holy fire and hoping – not praying, but hoping – he wouldn't smite them for their efforts.

Okay, maybe Dean sent up one, itsy, bitsy, little prayer before he lit the match.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

A/Ns: Could we finally – FINALLY, ACTUALLY – be getting Cas?

You know, as long as he answers the summons… ;D

(say it with me: no-good, dirty, rotten author. No, no, this time I swear, we're actually getting him)