-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

-Reviews: You did it! You guys blew the 1000th review milestone out of the water. Actually, we can award most of that to VegasGranny and Atlasnix, both of who went back and reviewed every chapter available to bump up that number XD We passed that 1000th milemarker like four hours after the chapter was up, lolz. I'm preeeety sure that's "cheating" but 1. There were no rules, 2. It was a numbers game all along, 3. This wasn't supposed to be bribery, and 4. Who gives a * because we get back-to-back chapters!

Oh, and a huge, amazing, special thanks to everyone who continued to review well after we hit our goal :D You guys are the most awesome of awesomeness.

-Chapter Warnings: It's time to venture back up to Heaven. Armed with the lying capabilities of a Vulcan, there's only one more thing to settle up. What the heck they're gonna do with poor Angela Garrett's braindead body. Bobby's really gotta learn to say no to house guests. Plus, surprise cameos are making phone calls, Azazel's kidnapping language professors, and I'm a no-good-dirty-rotten-author writing cliffhangers with delight.

-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 16

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

Dean was trying to psyche himself up for sending the angel back upstairs – Castiel having insisted she'd been gone too long already – when she turned to both of them and dropped one last bombshell.

"This body will need to be connected to a life support system while I am gone."

Both Winchesters and Bobby blinked at her.

"Wait, what?" Dean asked, the first one to form words, but probably not the best words.

Castiel merely stared at him. "This vessel was braindead when I approached her. She will return to that state once I have left for Heaven."

Bobby snorted from his spot leaning against his desk. They'd had breakfast at around nine am, once Castiel had been declared ready and the boys were too tired to do much else than shovel down what the older hunter had put in front of them. After that, Cas had started on about the invisible timer ever ticking down, insisting that her absence really would be noticed and cause far more trouble for them than her return would. The humans had moved into the living room, fully expecting Castiel to just blink out once goodbyes were said.

Now Bobby was wondering if the nearest hospital was the next on their list. Long term hospice care, maybe? That was gonna take some paperwork they didn't have, though.

Sam, probably thinking along the same lines, exchanged a look with his brother.

"What the hell, Cas!" Dean fired off, surprise coloring his words more than anger, but with him the two weren't always easy to tell apart. "That lady's letting you roam around in her body; least you could do is friggin' heal her!"

The angel leveled a look his way that so clearly reminded him that they'd just spent the last twelve hours discussing how they should not be making changes to the timeline. It was such a descriptive look, that when Castiel said as much, dryly, Dean already knew what was coming word for word.

Female vessels. Way more emotionally expressive. That was what this was. Absolutely.

"Who's gonna notice one woman waking up from a coma," he groused instead, with an expression that Castiel was quickly identifying as I-understand-your-logic-but-I-am-going-to-ignore-it-because-I-don't-like-it. It turned out, upon spending extended time with humans, they made even less sense than she had previously known.

"Very few humans, I imagine," the angel answered, expression unimpressed. "The reaper assigned to her, however, most certainly will."

"Reaper?" Sam asked, color draining somewhat from his face. He glanced at Dean, who looked equally perplexed and cast a quick glance around the seemingly empty room, looking for something he knew they couldn't see.

"Angela Garrett was never intended to wake up." Castiel was back to being an impenetrable and imposing wall of rightness and perseverance, with only a hint of exasperation. "The reaper assigned to her soul will notice if she is suddenly healed and removed from Death's list."

"And the reaper would report it to Heaven," Sam finished easily enough, casting yet another look his brother's way, this one wary. They all knew what level of royally-screwed that meant for them.

"No," Castiel corrected, causing all both humans to look at her with surprise. "Reapers have no obligation to report to Heaven, or any of the afterlives. They report only to Death. However, it is likely that an… inquiry would be made as to why they were not informed of Heaven's intentions to revive Angela Garrett."

"Professional courtesy between departments?" Bobby snorted sarcastically, though he figured he wasn't actually that far off.

Dean let out a laugh that wasn't very mirthful even as Castiel nodded. "Bureaucracy in Heaven. Why am I not surprised?"

"So, the reaper won't say anything if you leave her in a coma?" Sam asked cautiously, working through the information internally and ignoring his family, who were being less than helpful. "Won't he care that she's being used as a vessel?"

"Her fate is unchanged, whether as my vessel or on life support." The angel seemed entirely unremorseful about that fact, and the humans in the room were trying not to take that awfully personally. Well, Sam and Dean were trying. Bobby still wasn't entirely on board with all this. "The natural order remains. Her body will eventually fail, leaving her soul to be reaped. That is all the reaper cares about."

"Damn," Dean said with a facsimile of a smile – too much teeth, too little smile – stretched across his lips. "Death is cold."

Castiel stared at him for a moment, that intensity turning contemplative. "Perhaps. But the destination awaiting her is not. The reaper will abide so long as we do not change that."

The humans exchanged looks, and Dean finally sighed, scrubbing a hand through his hair tiredly. "Alright. Looks like we're shopping for life support."

-o-o-o-

Castiel zapped them into a medical equipment warehouse belonging to Avera Health, an hour away in Madison. Their first idea – leaving Angela at a hospital – was nixed by Dean immediately. Without ID and the ability to contact next of kin, the hospital wouldn't keep her on life support long once they declared her officially braindead. Then Cas would be back to the vessel search, something she assured them was unlikely to work out well a second time. Their next idea – robbing a local hospital for the equipment to do home hospice – was nixed by Sam, who decided that life-saving machinery should probably remain where it could save lives. So Bobby's idea, complete with an idjits tacked on at the end, had been one of the supply companies that provided hospitals with those machines in the first place.

The warehouse they arrived in was massive, total Raiders of the Lost Ark huge, filled with crates and boxes upon boxes of plastic-wrapped medical equipment that neither Sam nor Dean had any clue the purpose of, let alone how to use. Dean, having traveled Angel Air more regularly than Sam (who, at this point, had a grand tally of none), recovered from the jolting trip faster. He was used to the clenched, cramped up feeling of his internal organs rattling around inside the cage that was his body, and the way his muscles buzzed from the abrupt change of standing to moving to standing again, all faster than he could even blink.

Sam, on the other hand, looked like he might throw up, but he was holding it down like a champ.

"Alright," Dean said as his kid brother managed to stand up straight, legs holding up beneath his impressive height. "What do we need?"

Castiel blinked owlishly at both Winchester men when she realized they were looking directly at her and expecting an answer. She glanced around the endless expanse of boxes with a blank expression, then back to Dean. "I am not familiar with the medical equipment needed to keep a human body alive."

He pulled a bitchface worthy of his younger brother and threw his arms up. "Great! What are we supposed to do, play Life Support Bingo?"

Beside him, Sam rolled his eyes and pulled out his phone. "Keep watch," he ordered with some exasperation, already pulling up the necessary medical information for homecare off the internet. As the page loaded, he started strolling through the various machines, looking for their names and any information they would need.

"You heard him." Dean made a shooing motion towards Castiel, which the angel regarded with a severe lack of amusement, but moved towards another aisle nonetheless to watch for any service workers that might stumble upon them. Behind her, Sam muttered something about always having to be the mother, to which Dean called him something less than flattering and Sam answered back with a profanity of his own in a manner that completely contrasted their harsh words. Castiel watched them over her shoulder now and then, completely remiss in her guard duties (though to be honest her senses were hardly limited to sight alone) as she tried to better understand her new charges.

Then Sam started pointing out crates for Castiel to transport back to the Singer household and the angel focused on the task at hand.

-o-o-o-

"This is a pain in the ass," Dean grumbled from his spot against the wall, behind the bed, half crouched, half precariously balanced, trying to plug in the last of the three different machines into the already overloaded sockets of Bobby's spare room that had been converted into a storage of sorts (and then mostly forgotten about). The previous contents of the room – numerous boxes, a broken down bed, and what could probably qualify as a dresser but had long seen better days – were now out in the hall, crowding the narrow corridor. Bobby was going to be positively thrilled, soon as he got back from his supply run and whatever errand he said he needed to run in town (to which he'd grumpily snapped it was none of the boys' business after Dean pestered him for details. Dean turned to his brother once the older hunter left and said "twenty on prostate exam." Sam hit him in the arm and told him to grow up, then mumbled just under his breath, "e-harmony date" and pretended to ignore the grin Dean sent his way.)

The older Winchester finally got the plug into the outlet and straightened with a triumphant noise that was somewhat undercut by a groan as he righted from the awful position. He might be ten years younger, but he was still pushing thirty.

"You are the one who set these conditions," Castiel reminded him from her own duties of removing the last of the heaviest boxes (filled with books, no doubt). They'd have to ask Bobby what he wanted done with them. There'd be some space left in the room once they finished setting all this crap up, but the broken down bed and larger furniture would need a new home. Dean suspected the barn in the back would be it, but some of those boxes didn't have any names written on them. The man from the future suspected what their contents were, given they looked like they hadn't been touched in at least fifteen years, and figured they'd be lucky enough not to piss off Bobby just by moving 'em around, let alone sending them to the barn via Angel Airs.

Dean pulled a face at Cas's back anyway, but the celestial being continued, regardless, "Did you not think there would be consequences to your demands?"

The look Sam sent his way – the smug-as-shit one that said 'well, that was a long time coming' – made Dean narrow his eyes. He was not liking this new dynamic of kid brother and angel tag-teaming him all the damn time. Before he could open his mouth to respond appropriately, they were alerted to Bobby's return by the disgruntled exclamation coming from the hall as the old hunter made it up the stairs to see the mess they'd made of his home.

"What the hell is all this?" His bearded face popped up from the other side of the furniture-and-box blockade, something halfway between enraged and bewildered spread across his face.

"Heya, Bobby," Sam answered with a reassuring (translation: weak) smile. "We figured this was the best room to set Angela up in."

The hunter's eyes bulged, his eyebrows reaching for his cap.

"We can't take her on the road with us." Dean shrugged, gesturing to all the heavy equipment – the ventilator, heart monitor, and IV feeds for nutrients.

"So yer leaving her here?" he balked, loudly, and the brothers exchanged glances. Apparently, they had not all been on the same page that morning.

"Uh…" Sam glanced between father figure and brother.

"You're kinda the only permanent home we got," Dean reasoned, and Bobby's eyes narrowed at the obvious attempt on his heartstrings, even as those strings definitely twanged. He growled low in his throat at the warmth blossoming in his chest. Damn manipulative kids.

"What the hell am I supposed to tell people?" he groused instead, refusing to admit or acknowledge that, darn it, he'd caved in all of two seconds flat. Not like fighting a Winchester on anything ever worked out well for anyone who wasn't a Winchester.

"What," Dean pulled his head back and Bobby was gonna start making a bitchface list of his own pretty shortly, "you get a lot of guests up here, do ya, Bobby?"

Blue-green eyes narrowed and Dean was pretty sure that if there hadn't been a pile of boxes separating them, the back of his head would be getting smacked. "I do have a life outside of you boys, ya know."

"Knitting nights and demonic book club?"

Both head's turned to Sam, blinking in surprise. Such sass was usually reserved for Dean. But there was a good-natured smile on his face where he was crouched at the foot of the hospital bed they had totally stolen an hour and a half ago.

"There's a market for crocheted devils traps, didn't you know?" the old hunter growled back, though it looked like Sam, as always, had managed to defuse the situation as only he ever could. "Little old witch-ladies love 'em."

The younger Winchester laughed, standing up as he finished tucking the last sheet corner and locked down the wheels. "Just tell anyone who asks that she's a niece. Home care is cheaper than hospice in a lot of ways."

Bobby's expression was hardly believing. He gestured over the blockade to the room chalk full of expensive looking equipment. "That's cheap?"

Over by the bed, shimmying his way out from said machinery, Dean shrugged. "You know a guy."

Bobby heaved a sigh, rubbing the back of his head through his cap and knowing he was already done for.

"I'm getting too old for this," he muttered before leveling his most deadly look at the two boys, who straightened to attention beneath it, and damn their daddy for that. "She croaks and you two are hauling ass back here. I ain't burying her."

From the corner of the room where Castiel was re-stacking some of the unnamed boxes that Dean suspected would stay in the safety and comfort of the home, the angel piped in, "If Angela's body should pass and I am not present to revive her, I believe we will have more pressing concerns than disposing of her remains."

Bobby harrumphed from the hallway, crossing his arms over his chest. "You've clearly never smelled a dead body before."

To which Castiel tilted her head tellingly and Sam quickly changed the conversation to something far less morbid before the angel could respond with unintentional arrogance that might just make Bobby change his mind about being so generous with his guest bedroom.

-o-o-o-

By the time the room was finally set up, Castiel was beginning to show signs of agitation with her continued time on earth, and there was nothing left to do but say their farewells, Dean reasoned. He wasn't happy about it, but didn't see much more use in putting it off any longer. Sam gave the angel an encouraging, though somewhat awkward shoulder pat rather than a hug, which Castiel would not have reciprocated nor entirely understood, he figured. Bobby just nodded with a grunt that probably meant something like 'be safe up there' or 'see you when I see you.' Both were equally likely.

Dean, on the other hand, latched onto that slim wrist as she made to climb onto the hospital bed. Blue eyes turned and locked on his own, and despite everything they'd done in the last twenty four hours to fight it off, fear curled in his gut once more. Dean was a man of action and, admittedly, at least some level of control. This felt like neither of those things.

"Just…be careful up there," he started, clearing his throat when his voice came out a little rougher than he'd intended. "Don't trust anyone."

Castiel only stared at him. "They're my family."

A flare of annoyance rushed through him at that, but Dean fought it back down. He had to remind himself that even after years of abuse from Heaven and those winged dicks, Cas had never stopped thinking of them as family. Never stopped longing for them to be what Sam and Dean were to each other: brothers. That never-ending well of hope was part of what made Cas such a damn good friend. He never gave up on you, no matter what, and Dean knew that it was probably the only reason the angel had stuck with him through all of it. God knew he didn't deserve to be believed in.

"Just…keep your head down," he amended, trying to ignore the curling dread in his stomach. Cas could handle himself. Herself. He just had to trust that. "We may not be your family yet, but you are ours. If you go dark up there, we can't come get you. So, please, just… stay safe."

Castiel stared at him for another moment, those bluest of blue eyes softening ever so slightly as she gave one, curt nod. "I will, Dean."

She finished climbing onto the bed and Sam helped her get settled beneath the light hospital sheets they'd also stolen. He clipped the heart monitor onto the tip of her left index finger, hooked up her IV for fluids, did something Dean refused to watch for nutrients and bi-product (Bobby flat out left the room at that point, muttering about house guests as he went), and then the younger Winchester handed her the ventilation tube.

Both Sam and Dean had to turn away from that part. Thank god the angel could control her gag reflex, sliding the thing down her throat with what sounded like ease, given the complete silence of it all. She settled back on the bed and the two brothers chanced a glance over their shoulders to make sure she was done. Castiel nodded to them and Sam reached over and flipped the machine, which started up with a light hum and began breathing for the angel with quiet, deep vibrations.

The angel closed her eyes and, a moment later, an undercurrent of light lit just beneath the surface of her skin. It traveled up her arms, under the Zepplin t-shirt and up her neck to gather in her face. It pooled around the tube which Sam was taping in place, and beneath her closed eyelids. The younger Winchester took a step back as the light grew to be almost blinding to look at, even in such small amounts as what leaked through.

Then it was gone. Angela fell unnaturally still, the room seemed unnaturally dim, and the ventilator kept right on humming. All quiet on the western front.

Sam checked a couple of the readouts on the machines. "I think we're good…"

He took a cautious step back and both brothers just stared, waiting with half-bated breaths, as Angela Garrett kept right on breathing.

"Yeah, we should be good," Sam repeated with a nod. The two stood in silence for another moment more, watching the woman's chest rise and fall beneath the perfectly folded over hospital sheet. Sam shifted on his feet. "You think this is gonna work?"

Maybe a little too late to ask, but ask he did.

"Cas may be a total nerd angel but…" Dean took in a deep breath, reminding himself that his friend was a badass angel of the Lord. He didn't need protection. "He's quick on his feet, and loyal as hell. If he says he's with us, he's with us."

His voice dropped to a lower volume as he added on, almost to himself, "He can take care of himself until then."

Sam didn't disagree, nor did he think Dean was necessarily lying or fooling himself. Still, he didn't fail to notice the concern in his brother's eyes, despite the bolstered words.

Though it didn't stop him from correcting, "Her, Dean."

"Whatever," his brother grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest defensively, eyes never leaving the rising and falling of that chest. Sam watched for another moment as well before he nodded, mostly to himself. He gave his brother a congratulatory (and encouraging) nudge to the bicep before he headed out of the room. Dean decided he'd watch for just a little while longer.

Just to be sure.

-o-o-o-

Over the next several days Sam had to drag his brother away from the unconscious vessel multiple times. Dean had a terrible habit of checking in on her every fifteen minutes, just to make sure she was still breathing. Sam got it; this was a human being they were suddenly responsible for keeping alive. But he'd read a dozen manuals, half a dozen home-care books, and spent way too many hours researching the subject online all so that he could confidently say they knew what they were doing.

Which he repeatedly told Dean, insisting that Angela would be fine, Castiel would be fine, and that he needed to relax before he drove them all crazy with his anxious fiddling and obsessive checking.

In the meantime, Sam and Bobby dug into ancient languages and lore on sacked civilizations in search of their mystery green-eyed woman. It was on the evening of the second day after Castiel left them that Bobby plopped a book down in front of him, interrupting his own research, which, admittedly, he'd been taking a break from to fiddle with dad's phone. There was a voicemail on it and he was trying to crack the pin code so he could make sure no one needed their help. Now, though, Sam set the device aside to pick up the book and scan through the page Bobby had left open. His posture straightened immediately, mind suddenly alert and more awake than it had been in hours, at the sight of the familiar symbols he'd seen etched onto the tombs from his vision.

"That's it," he said, awe in his voice and eyes as he glanced up at Bobby.

"It's Proto-Canaanite," the old hunter said with a touch of pride but also that classic huff that was Bobby Singer. "It's old, Sam. Not as old as cuneiform, but damn close. This stuff came before the first recognized alphabet. Hell, it's what turned into the first alphabet."

Sam glanced back down at the symbols again, immediately scanning the several paragraphs of information beside the pictures of stone tablets and crumbled bits of ancient architecture. "This is it, Bobby."

The gruff man nodded, like he'd known it would be and still sort of wished it wasn't. "Dates back as far as third millennium BC. Jordan River valley area, bit north of Mesopotamia." He let out a tired sigh and rolled his shoulders. "I'll start looking for sacked cities in the area. See if there's any lore or history out there."

"Ziggurats," Sam muttered suddenly, staring at the page but his mind was far away.

Bobby stilled, brow raised. "What?"

"The Mesopotamians were famous for their raised temples, called Ziggurats," Sam offered in explanation, though Bobby knew what a ziggurat was. Bobby knew everything. "The tomb I was in, it was raised above the city. I thought maybe it was just up on a hill, but there was a manmade ramp leading down, and if it was a ziggurat…"

"I'll start looking for cities with temples," the hunter agreed. "Sumer was more famous for 'em, but Canaanite architecture wasn't far off, much as I can tell."

Sam couldn't help the smile that pulled at his lips as he thought, 'I wanna be like Bobby when I grow up.'

"You're awesome, Bobby."

The hunter just grunted and took his book back.

-o-o-o-

Dean came down a couple hours later to find Sam caught between a book on Canaanite culture in twelfth century BC and a phone that wasn't his Crackberry (a joke Dean hadn't gotten to use in so long that he was now certainly making up for time lost). He plopped down at the kitchen table across from him and nudged the Sasquatch with his foot.

"What's that?"

Sam glanced up at him with the perfect kid brother face, but answered nonetheless, "Bobby figured out the language I saw in that tomb. It's Proto-Canaanite."

"Fascinating," Dean responded, sounding anything but. "I meant the phone."

"Oh," Sam blinked down at the device, then up at his brother. "It's Dad's. There's a voicemail on it, but I don't know the code, so I figured I'd try and crack it."

Dean sat upright, a little furrow in his brow that Sam was starting to identify as his brother remembering something from another lifetime. Sure enough, the man started nodding a second later, reaching out to take the phone from him.

"That sounds familiar," he said even as he turned the device over in his hands before tossing it back. "It might be Ellen, actually."

Sam perked up at that.

"I can't remember when she called, but a voicemail sounds right." Dean shrugged, getting up to open the fridge for a drink and maybe a snack. It was a bit late for dinner, but Bobby had told them to cook for themselves (which Dean hadn't exactly done) and it wasn't like he was unused to his sleep and food schedules being skewed. Given the washed bowl drying beside the sink, Sam had probably made himself a salad a couple hours ago, the freak, leaving Dean to fend for himself. "Don't know how early on it was before Dad's death, but if she's already left a message, we don't have to wait around anymore."

Liking the prospect of getting back on the road for more than one reason, and the slight excitement at meeting one of the people Dean swore would be like family to them, Sam took the phone back up with renewed vigor. "I'll keep at it, then."

Dean was pulling leftover burger fixings out of the fridge, sending a noise of approval his brother's way, when his own phone started ringing from his pocket. He dug it out with his left hand, balancing dinner in his right, and flipped it open.

"Hello."

"Dean?" The voice wasn't immediately familiar to him. It was male, older, but that could be half a dozen people. "Winchester?"

The hunter set the food down on the counter and switched the phone to his other ear, pressing his shoulder up to go hands free so he could grab and open his beer. "Yeah, who's this?"

"Daniel Elkins." Nine hundred miles away, a grizzled old hunter sitting at a bar in Manning, Colorado glanced over his shoulder as surreptitiously as possible to watch four newcomers settle at a table by the billiards and order a bottle of Jack. "You were right. Those vampires you mentioned? They just walked in."

-o-o-o-

Somewhere between Manning, Colorado and Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Dr. Charles Mann was sure he was about to die.

It had started with an older gentleman coming into his office during his free period with a smile that raised the hairs on his arm and straightened his spine like only evil could. Not that Charles had known what evil was or believed in it – he'd thought perhaps the man was a parent or an older student – until his eyes had turned a pale, terrible, unnatural yellow.

Now the professor was being dragged – mandhandled – into a motel room in a location he didn't recognize, but which most assuredly was not on campus, or anywhere near it if the starry night sky or expanse of low lying crop across the road from them was any indication. It had been raining in Princeton, and now there wasn't a cloud in the sky. Not to mention there weren't farmlands anywhere near the school. Unless you counted the West Windsor Fields, and these didn't look like those.

The man, or not-man, shoved Charles bodily into the room, a punishing grip on his elbow just about the only thing that was keeping the professor upright as he stumbled into the dingy space. He had to blink repeatedly against the dim light, as only the blue flicker of a TV screen illuminated the room.

There was an annoyed noise beside and above him, and the professor flinched at the low growl coming from the man holding his elbow. "What did you do to your clothes?"

The professor canted his head up at the thing currently kidnapping him. His eyes went wide as his brain processed the sounds around its current panicking. He recognized the words, but it was a slow, distant thing. Like wading through fog. The man wasn't speaking English. He wasn't speaking any language that anyone had spoken in thousands of years.

And, honestly, as if having one's life work suddenly presented in speaking form wasn't enough, Charles was also completely unsure what he was talking about (Charles was pretty unsure of just about everything right now, considering he was fairly certain he had just been teleported, which wasn't possible). But the man with the yellow eyes – which were back to their steely grey now and looking quite normal if not for the annoyance in them – wasn't talking to him.

There was a third person in the room; a woman sat on the edge of the further of two mattresses, television remote in hand and eyes glued to the screen. She was wearing jean cutoffs, frayed along the edges and- Oh. Charles noticed the two lengths of material haphazardly left on the carpet by her bare feet. Well, they had apparently been pants not too long ago.

"It was itchy."

Charles stared, eyes as boggled as his mind, as the woman also answered in perfect Proto-Canaanite. Well, he could only assume it was perfect. He'd never heard it spoken aloud outside of a handful of colleagues, and they all disagreed on a lot of the how. Yet, these two spoke it without hesitation or question. Charles was a professor of language. He had multiple PhD's in several different fields, both modern and ancient. He was an expert. Which meant he knew what someone speaking a native tongue sounded like. And my God, both of these crazy people was speaking a six thousand year old language like a native.

Maybe he was the one who'd finally gone crazy.

He glanced between her and the man gripping his arm. His kidnapper growled a second time, once again causing the professor to flinch, but his attention and ire was solely on the woman. "Yes, because they're jeans and your wardrobe palate goes about as far as dried animal hide."

The girl just shrugged a shoulder, either uncaring or unaffected by the clear insult in those words, even if the professor was not currently operating at a mental level high enough to comprehend what was being insulted. Tangles of black hair moved up and down with the gesture, but her eyes stayed on the TV and Charles was oddly reminded of a teenager purposefully ignoring and angering her father. Of course, she was too old to be the man's daughter, or at least Charles thought she was (she looked to be about the age of his students), and besides, the two looked nothing alike.

He glanced between them again, something like hysteria building up in him as his rational brain tried to be reasonable and utterly failed. He'd been kidnapped and teleported into a family feud? This had to be a dream. A terrible, awful dream that he would very much like to wake up from now.

"They were tight," the woman complained again, clicking a button on the remote. The TV switched channels.

"That's because they were skinny jeans," Yellow Eyes offered with a grin that was anything but friendly.

Definitely a dream. Most certainly. Perhaps he'd accidentally ingested something bad with his dinner that evening. Or been slipped some of those drugs the kids did these days. Something about bath salts, was it?

Charles was getting an even worse feeling than he'd had when this man grabbed him in his office and whisked him away to… um… a motel room. Somewhere. Somewhere that was not Princeton. God, it was like a terrible joke, if it wasn't a dream. He was really starting to dread the punchline, still quite sure he was about to die.

"I brought you a present, Princess," his captor continued instead, forced cheer in his voice as he dropped the case of her ruined pants. Not that Charles' brain could wrap his head around how that, of all things, was really a concern here. He didn't get to think on it further, either, which may have been a godsend except that the man holding his arm started shaking him through the grip. Charles winced as his elbow and shoulder joint both protested; he wasn't exactly young anymore.

"I told you not to call me that, demon." The woman turned his way, and Charles found it ridiculously hard to breath for the second time that night staring into a stranger's eyes. Hers were glowing. They weren't yellow, like her counterpart's (and Charles was not thinking about what she had called him. He wasn't. It was just a nickname. Like profanity. Yes. Just like that). Instead, hers were a deep and mesmerizing green. Like emeralds, or an ancient forest, or something poetic and mystical that Charles' brain simply couldn't fathom right then and there. The professor couldn't have looked away if he wanted to. Terrifyingly enough, he wasn't sure he did.

She stared at him for a moment, brow pinching in what he could only assume was confusion. Then she blinked and her eyes stopped glowing and Charles stopped reciting Shakespeare in his head with dazed relief. The woman stood from the bed, aiming the remote towards the television once more and shutting it off.

The abrupt silence in the room was overwhelming, and Charles immediately remembered he had every reason to be terrified. While the silence stretched, the professor gaping as his brain rebooted, the woman turned an annoyed gaze to the demon. "Is he a mute present, then?"

Charles, certain the conversation was about him but having a terrible time processing it all the same, managed to blurt out, in an awed and terribly shaky voice, "You're speaking Proto-Canaanite."

The woman's head tilted and the man gripping his elbow hard enough to bruise rolled his eyes so obviously that his head went with him. Then Charles was being shaken once more.

"Wrong tongue, Professor. Try again, and get it right this time, or you won't have one left after tonight," the yellow-eyed man bit out and Charles found himself shaking all on his own now, quite suddenly sure this thing, whatever he was, would follow through on that threat if he continued to do things incorrectly. Not that the professor knew what was correct here.

"H-Hello," he stuttered out weakly, this time making sure to speak the same language as them. He probably should have figured out she didn't know English, based on the fact that the two occupants of the room were speaking a language that had been dead several millennia.

"Hello," she responded evenly.

"Congratulations, now you know why you're here!" his kidnapper announced with another fake smile. He shoved his captive forward and Charles stumbled, catching himself on the edge of the first bed. The woman didn't move. "You have a week to teach her English, Doc."

Charles barely had time to turn around before the motel door was slammed shut and he was suddenly left, alone and confused and terrified, with a woman with glowing green eyes who spoke a language she couldn't possible know how to speak.

But then again, teleportation wasn't a thing, either, and Charles was fairly certain that had happened only a few short minutes ago.

He turned back, slowly – oh, so slowly and he would never make fun of those terrible actors and actresses in those awful horror flicks ever again – to face the woman. She hadn't moved, just remained standing beside the second bed with narrowed eyes and thinned lips that looked so terrifyingly like disapproval that Charles couldn't really move.

He swallowed nervously, looking around the room for lack of any other sensible thing to do. There were books everywhere, the professor noted with some surprise. His mind greedily latched onto the distraction, and he crossed to the little kitchenette table the largest stack was He ran over the titles in his mind, picking up the top book, a thick paperback with a white cover and large red words across the front that lay over a picture of a decaying temple.

"Ancient Greek?" he said aloud without realizing he had. A curious sound – the soft jangle of thin metal – and movement from his peripheral immediately drew Charles' attention. He looked up, wary of the woman now walking towards him. The professor fell back a step, drawing the book to his chest as though that would somehow protect him. Or maybe he was protecting the book, he thought with an edge of hysteria.

She drew up short as that weird metal jingle sounded again (almost like those ridiculously tiny wind chimes that were terribly annoying and high pitch, especially when one was grading papers on an otherwise calm and quiet evening on one's front porch with a bottle of particularly delectable Malbec). Something hooked her lower right leg and halted her a foot and a half from where he stood, almost pressed back up to the wall now. The woman cast an annoyed look down at her ankle, and Charles couldn't help himself. He followed her gaze down to a thin, gold chain looped around her ankle. It ran the width of the closest bed and disappeared around the corner of the mattress, presumably attached to the nightstand, though Charles couldn't see that far. It was a delicate looking thing, like a fine necklace, only it was glowing unnaturally. Given the line of irritated red around her skin there, Charles imagined the chain was not nearly as fragile as it looked.

She huffed something Charles didn't hear properly, but he imagined it wasn't very nice. When the woman raised her eyes to his again, the annoyance remained but he was surprised to see it didn't appear to be with him. She righted herself and held her hand out, obviously for the book he was clutching to his chest.

Charles glanced down at it, then her, then the book again before his brain signals finally got through the miasma of panic and, in no uncertain terms, told him to hand it over and hand it over now. She accepted the book and dropped her gaze to its cover. Her hand traced down the cover, following the English letters. Charles noticed her nails were badly chipped and caked with dirt.

"I also speak Greek, if that would be easier for you," she said, now in perfectly enunciated Ancient Greek. Charles knew what that language sounded like; having the modernized descendant still around meant deciphering its secrets was infinitely easier than something like Canaanite or Sumerian. Charles' mind was back to its rebooting stage. She was speaking multiple dead languages with perfect ease, and those two had been centuries – and thousands of miles – apart.

She handed the tomb back to him, and he could only accept it with an owlish stare. "I suppose it would be Old Greek, now."

"Ancient," Charles muttered back without thinking, though at least this time he managed to do it in the right language. At her quirked brow – and there was definitely judgement there that made his legs shake – he managed a strained, "We call it Ancient, not Old."

She canted her head for a moment in thought, before nodding in what Charles assumed was acceptance, and then went right back to staring and waiting.

Brain still stuttering, Charles gripped the paperback loosely back to his chest and glanced around the room covered in books. There were others on language – Ancient Egyptian and a Dummy's Guide to English – along with several World and North American history books, and a few culture and modern technology guides. One of which was carelessly half open atop an upside down MacBook that clearly hadn't been used by this woman.

He looked down at the book on Ancient Greek in his hands, barely even seeing its cover, before he met the woman's eyes once more. Although his brain was having great difficulty connecting even the most simplest of dots, he managed a stuttered, disbelieving, "Who- Who are you?"

-o-o-o-

Many thousands of units of unknown measurement above Manning, Colorado, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and the dingy motel room somewhere in between, Castiel was back in Heaven, where time moved very differently.

The angel had spent a long while in silent contemplation, sitting through several of Arthur Staten's cycling memories. None of Castiel's siblings or superiors had noticed his initial absence from Heaven – at least not as anything suspect. Several of his brothers asked where he had been, but it was mild interest and not suspicion that colored their tones. Cas easily evaded their curiosity with what he had learned from the Winchester's teachings.

After much time in deep thought, both in the paradises of his Father's creations and while performing his heavenly duties, Castiel finally settled on the first angel he would approach in his side mission: reaching out to those in the Host who might risk disobedience against their superiors in order to do what was right. As per Dean's request, Castiel would only do so under the most covert of approaches. While he had his own doubts about Dean's distrust of all his siblings, the angel would still heed his warning and his request to remain safe.

Which was why Castiel decided to start with his oldest compatriot and an angel he knew and trusted more than any other still in his garrison.

"Uriel," Castiel greeted, grace swirling across his features as he approached his far more stalwart brother. "There's something I'd like to discuss with you."

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

-A/Ns: Say it with me: no good, dirty, rotten, author ;P (Come on, you all love me and you know it!)

-Seriously? You left us with THAT? Hell yes, I did, cuz I'm a jerk. Uriel's on scene, Cas is already getting into trouble, and Daniel-friggin-Elkins is back! You mighta thought we were done with Season 1 because of that whole…you know…labeling every chapter 'Season 2' bit… but nope, we're 16 chapters into Season Friggin' Two and we haven't even finished the events of Season 1 yet. Oi vey. My estimated 30-chapter-per-season-count is nooooot holding up with this one, guys.

-Cas in Heaven: I debated for a bit about whether to keep the female pronouns while Cas was up in Heaven but ultimately decided not to. Most of us think of him as a man, so if he's not currently in his female vessel, he would revert back to being a man. I know that's not how it actually works, but it's how us gender-binary fellows tend to think, I figure ;)

-Up Next: The boys are gonna rescue Daniel Elkins from a nest of vampires without that gun Dean might have borrowed with the promise he'd be bringing it back for just such a situation. What could possibly go wrong?

Next chapter will be up tomorrow! CONGRATS!