-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: Happy back-to-back Sunday! I'm actually really excited for this chapter. It's a fun one :)

-Chapter Warnings: So I'm a terrible, no good, dirty rotten author who's *not* going to give you a conclusion to that cliffhanger, just like I *didn't* give you a conclusion to that missing bunker key. Well...yet. But in the meantime, I give you other goodies! Namely a vampire nest, an overly confident Dean Winchester, and underly confident Daniel Elkins, a missing Magical Kill-Anything Gun, and our favorite King of the Crossroads battling ants, spiders, and jellyfish! (it'll make more sense by the time you get to it...)

-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 17

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

"Elkins?" Dean straightened in the kitchen, surprise crossing his face and voice enough for Sam to stop fiddling with the phone in his hands and look over with a questioning expression. Dean acknowledged the look but didn't respond.

"Yeah, you idiot," the older voice echoed down the line and Dean wondered if old age just turned all hunters grumpy of it was the presence of the vampires Dean had told him six months ago would kill him. "Now tell me what to do."

"They're there?" Dean gestured with his hand for Sam to find a map, crossing the kitchen to the table.

"That's what I said. They just walked in."

Sam checked the various papers on the table for all of five seconds before he grabbed his laptop from the corner and pushed it open. He pulled up Google Maps, a stretch of the United States spread across the screen, and turned towards his brother.

"Where are you?" Dean asked, even as he mouthed 'Manning, Colorado' to Sam, who quickly pulled up the area.

"I'm in a bar in town. I don't think they spotted me yet," the man said, though the tone in his voice suggested he was less than sure of that.

"Yeah," Dean muttered, thinking back to the bloodbath they'd once walked into at the man's cabin, "they spotted you."

"Great," Daniel grumbled, voice terse. "You gonna tell me some good news sometime soon? Like how you're gonna get me out of this?"

"How many are there?" Dean gestured for Sam to zoom out and away from the town. Picking up on what his brother was looking for, the brunette quickly typed in Bobby's address and let the directions do the rest for them.

"Four of 'em." He could hear fabric shift and the creak of a bar stool come over the line: Daniel probably looking over his shoulder for where the vampires were.

"Alright." Dean ran a hand down his mouth, licking his lips as he stared at the screen. He'd told Daniel the day he talked the Colt off his hands that this would happen. Told him to call when it did and that he'd be there to sort it out. Stupidly, he hadn't actually come up with a plan for when that day inevitably came. "What would be your first move if you hadn't called me?"

Down the line, the old man grunted like he found something funny about that. "Try and make it home. I'm not armed for vamps; machete isn't exactly inconspicuous."

"Yeah, I hear ya." Dean pointed to a spot just past midpoint on the map between the two destinations. Sam zoomed in, did some quick computing and clicking, and then nodded a positive back. "Okay, well, they got you at your cabin last time. They probably followed you from the bar, so you should be able to make it to your truck."

"Yeah?" Daniel sounded less than sure. But at least he wasn't arguing. "Then what?"

"Drive. Don't go home, don't stop, just floor it."

There was a snort down the line, followed by incredulous silence as he waited for more and eventually realized it wasn't coming. "That's it? That's your big plan? What the hell's to stop them from following me?"

"How much gas you got?" Dean was already moving. He shoved the food back into the fridge (no reason to leave Bobby with even more of a mess than the unconscious woman upstairs). Sam closed his laptop, sliding it and several of the books he'd been reading into his bag.

"'Bout three-quarter tank," the hunter said and Dean could hear the jingle of keys in the background. "It ain't gonna last forever, though."

The sasquatch headed for the stairs, bag in hand, with a nod to his brother that said he'd get what they needed. Bobby came in just as Sam bolted up the stairs, eyebrows raised and Dean gestured that there wasn't time to talk but he and Sam were obviously taking off for an urgent hunt.

"Doesn't have to," Dean answered Elkins as he grabbed his jacket from the den and threw it on, then snatched up Sam's go-bag. He headed out the front door for his Baby. Lucky for them it was summer and the days were growing longer, which meant more sunlight and less vamp activity. "That's enough to get you to sunrise. Just head east. They'll follow you until they realize you're not stopping. Trust me, they won't leave their nest, and even if they do, they'll have to stop before the sun comes up."

Daniel grumbled something down the line but it sounded close enough to an annoyed 'fine' (and was accompanied by the sound of a door opening and wind and the outdoors) that Dean knew he was already headed for his truck. Sam came out of the house and down the steps, throwing both their bags and a duffle full of weapons and supplies into the trunk Dean had left open. He shouted an apology back to Bobby, along with the sort of facial expression that said he didn't know what was up either but they'd call, and then he climbed into the car alongside his brother.

"We're in South Dakota now," Dean was saying into the phone, shutting his door and starting up the familiar rumble of Baby's engine. "Sam and I'll meet you in Julesburg, the Nebraska side. Call us when you lose 'em."

"Yeah, yeah," Daniel muttered, though his tone had a modicum of appreciation, if not still incredulity. The sound of his own engine turning over rumbled through the line, as did the sound of a gear shift and the hunter flooring it out of the dirt parking lot. "Just bring my gun."

Dean pulled away from the salvage yard, dropping the phone from his ear and flipping it shut, call already ended from the other end. Sam was looking at him expectantly as they pulled out onto the main road. "That was Daniel Elkins. He needs our help."

-o-o-o-

"Vampires?"

Dean looked over at his brother's incredulous tone and spared him a weird look in return.

"Yeah, vampires."

"Vampires?" Sam's eyes were wide, staring at him like he was crazy. "You're kidding, right? They don't… Dean, they don't exist."

"What?" Dean's knee-jerk reaction was quickly offset by an internal 'oh, shit.' That's right, Dean realized with a jolt. They hadn't known vampires existed before Elkins. Dad never told them, because he'd honestly thought Daniel and others had killed them all.

"Uh, yeah, shit, sorry, I- they- yeah, they're real. Real sons of bitches. Dad thought they were extinct. Wiped out by hunters like Elkins." Dean almost laughed at that now, knowing how many friggin' vampires they would run into in the ten years to come. Not to mention the Alpha.

Yeah, extinct had been off by about a mile and then another hundred.

"Skip the garlic and the crosses. Most of the legends are total crap," he added with a half smirk in Sam's direction, who was still staring at him incredulously, a multitude of questions building in his eyes. "I think we have machetes in the trunk."

Dean practically cackled as his brother's eyes doubled in size and he stumbled out a disbelieving, "Machetes?!"

Man, how the hell had they ever made it to the end of the world the first time around?

-o-o-o-

"So this is really the guy you got the Colt from?"

It was hours later, the boys having crossed into Nebraska some time ago, with only a hundred and twenty miles left to the Colorado border. Elkins had called about twenty minutes earlier to report that the vamps had finally given up tailing him. He was gonna keep going for another thirty minutes or so to be sure, then hit up a gas station. By that point, he'd be riding on fumes. Then, with any luck, he'd cross over to I-76 with a full tank of gas and no surprises, and eventually meet up with the Winchesters just north of the state line.

Dean had given Sam the complete low-down on vamps, from their second set of teeth to the necessary decapitation to get the job done. Even told him a logging saw or barbed wire could do in a pinch, and the face his brother pulled at those little details served as a reminder to Dean that ten years was a long time, and this wasn't his apocalypse-grizzled brother he was talking to.

"Yeah," Dean answered his brother's question concerning the Colt. He stifled a yawn. He probably should have let Sam share some of the drive (he hadn't been sleeping great the past couple nights since Cas left) but it might as well be too late now. They were pretty much there already (they really weren't, they still had at least another hour and a half to go, but Dean was stubborn). "I told you that."

Sam made a noise and Dean glanced over with an expectant expression. The younger Winchester shifted awkwardly. "Honestly…I thought you were lying." As his brother's face shifted, clearly taking offense, the younger Winchester shrugged. "What? You showed up with a magical kill-anything gun and expected me to believe you got it from some hunting buddy of Dad's? I thought Cas gave it to you."

Actually, Sam had thought he'd made a deal for it back when he believed Cas was a demon. He hadn't had much time afterward to think about where it might have come from once he'd learned Cas was an angel. Even less when he learned Cas was an angel who had never met his brother before because Dean came from the future.

"Okay, first of all, I do still do stuff on my own, you know. I'm capable. I don't need Cas for everything." Beside him, Sam managed to bite his tongue and not hit that perfectly teed up opportunity. "Oh, and for the record, this is how we got the gun the first time."

Dean's face was smug, a total told ya so that didn't exactly fit the situation, but Sam was wise. Sam didn't bother arguing. He just let that look slide right off his brother's face all on its own, turning into a grimace. "Well, mostly. Elkins was already vamp food by that point."

"So you told him you were from the future and vampires were coming after him." If Sam's tone was anything to go by, his brother was still thinking he stole the gun from Elkins. "And he believed you."

Dean shot him a pissy look that was somehow still proud and charming. "I can be very persuasive when I want to be."

"Uh-huh."

"Shaddup. He gave it to me, didn't he?" Dean refocused on the road and Sam went quiet for another half mile.

"How's he going to feel about you losing it?"

Dean pulled another face, clearing his throat rather than answering the question. He sent his brother a side-long grimace that had Sam once more saying, "Uh-huh."

-o-o-o-

The sun was just barely climbing over the horizon, jagged mountain peaks silhouetted far off in the distance, when they pulled into a Biggerson's parking lot – empty this time of the morning – right along state lines. Daniel Elkins was already there, leaning against his old beat up truck, watching their approach. He pushed off the back gate as the Winchesters climbed out of the Impala, crossing the distance between their vehicles to greet them. Elkins stretched out his arm and shook Dean's hand as Sam rounded the car.

"Any problems?" Dean asked with a grin. Daniel returned the smile with one of his own.

"They followed me for a couple hours. Turned around just before Denver." The hunter greeted Sam with a nod, holding out his hand which the younger Winchester shook. Daniel jerked his head towards Dean. "So, he tell you he's from the future?"

Sam chuckled lightly. "Yeah."

"And you believed him too, huh?" Daniel glanced between the two brothers, the younger of which gave a goofy shrug. "Well, shit. I was hoping it had been a senile moment or something."

Sam laughed again, even as Elkins addressed Dean, asking what the plan was.

"We're heading right back to Manning." The quick response baffled Daniel momentarily, and he glanced to Sam who didn't bother adding his two cents. Dean knew what he was doing and they'd already discussed it on the way over.

"Just the three of us?"

"We'll be fine," the older Winchester waved off the Elkins' concern. "The nest only had five, six vampires, tops."

If he was remembering correctly. Which he was pretty sure he was. Yeah.

"Right," Daniel sounded less than confident as he dragged the word out, following it up with a noise in the back of his throat as he held out his hand. Seven super-powered monsters versus three humans didn't exactly sound like odds he'd gamble on. "Well I think I'll have that gun back, kid."

Sam looked expectantly at his brother, who cleared his throat awkwardly and ducked his head.

"Yeah, about that…"

Daniel's expression flipped rapidly between shock, outrage, and then flat out vexation. "Like father like son, huh?"

"Hey," Dean argued, but even his usual hard ass, I'm-right-you're-wrong-and-screw-you-while-I'm-at-it demeanor was coming out pretty weak here. "I came, didn't I?"

"Without my gun," Daniel emphasized, though it was clear he was still grateful for the partial save. He'd be less grateful going into a nest of vampires without a magic gun capable of, oh, killing vampires. He was pretty damn sure the deal had been to give Dean Winchester the Colt and Dean Winchester would come back, with the Colt, when vampires showed up to apparently kill him.

"We gave it to our dad," Dean growled out, starting to get a little defensive in front of the hunter who had never been willing to give it to John in the first place.

Beside him, Sam chanced a glance his way at the blatant omission concerning just where John was now, but he didn't bring it up.

Dean made a noise in the back of his throat and slapped on a cocky grin. "Besides, we don't need the Colt. We're three damn good hunters! We can take on a vamp nest easy."

-o-o-o-

Dean strained against the ropes wrapped around his torso, keeping him pinned to the old wooden support beam that looked about as ready to come tumbling down as the rest of the vampires' chosen hangout. Not that it was giving under any amount of pressure from the hunter.

"You know what would have been real handy to have right about now?"

Dean ignored the question, grunting as he pulled with everything he had one more time against the ropes. Finally, he sagged in defeat with an annoyed huff and glanced over at his fellow captive.

Elkins was strung up just as tightly, though his wrists had been tied together and hauled above his head to hang off an old hook driven into his support pillar. Daniel wasn't fighting against the ropes, letting Dean do all the useless struggling on his behalf. Which was fair, given the fresh bite still shining wet and lazily dribbling blood down his neck to soak his shirt. It wasn't fatal and luckily the vamps hadn't fed forced him to drink, but Dean knew it had to hurt like a bitch. Plus, the blood loss sure wasn't going to help things from here on out.

"Don't say it," the man from the future groaned.

"A magical gun that can kill vampires."

"I'm starting to see why my dad and you got along so well." Dean looked around the nest, the vampires all having conked out for a day of rest after finishing off one of their victims – a young woman now hanging limp, nothing more than a corpse – before finishing off with Daniel as dessert. There wasn't anything he could see within reach to cut the ropes. Dean had a pen knife tucked away in the ankle of his boot – dumb vamps had been too arrogant to search him properly – but getting to it would require an act of contortionism he wasn't looking forward to.

"Yeah, John," Elkins huffed beside him, voice a little rough but he otherwise seemed to be holding up pretty well. "He's a stubborn son of a gun. Good hunter though."

Dean just grunted and started trying to slide his leg up the pillar while the rest of him was serving center stage to a one-man bondage show. Damn vamps must have had a rope fetish of something. There was literally no reason to tie someone up with this much fucking rope.

"Don't suppose he could drop in on this party any time soon?"

Dean stilled at Elkins' hopeful, if not dry, question. A flash of pain and grief – and that endless pit of guilt he would never be free of – spiked through his chest. It stole the words from his mouth and his brain, and it took several long moments to find them again.

"John's dead," he finally managed, instantly annoyed with how it came out. All soft and quiet and mourning.

"…Shit." Elkins was silent as he processed the kid's words, staring at the Winchester boy. He'd never met Sam or Dean before, but there had been real pride in John's eyes anytime he talked about them. Of course, they'd just been kids at the time, but Daniel doubted that pride had gone away with age. "Guess that yellow-eyed son of a bitch finally got him. I was really rooting on him putting one between the bastard's eyes."

Dean was quiet, though he'd resumed his attempts to get to his ankle knife. "Yeah. Me too."

"Damn," Daniel swore again, resting his head back against the pillar and staring up at the dilapidated ceiling. "I'm sorry, kid."

Beside him, the young man nodded but said nothing more. Silence stretched between them, broken only by the snores of the vampires scattered throughout the barn and the shuffling and muttering of the hunter as he tried to contort his body into a position that allowed him access to his boot. It wasn't going all that well, to be honest.

"So, when you say you gave John the Colt…"

Dean winced and finally giving up and dropping his leg back to the ground. He spared Daniel a look that told him everything he needed to know.

"Now a demon has the magic gun that can kill anything?"

The hunter growled low in his throat, but didn't deny it. He didn't bother trying to get to the knife again, either. "We get it back."

"Yeah?" Daniel rolled his neck, immediately regretting the motion as the bite mark flared and he flinched. "Don't mind my skepticism. I'm just not feeling a lot of faith in your future knowledge at the moment."

Dean thunked his head against the pillar, and then closed his eyes and did it again just for good measure. Daniel let him have it and when he was done, the man from the future picked his head up off the wood and leveled Elkins with a look that dared him to say anything otherwise.

"Azazel uses it to open a Hell Gate a year from now. We get it back and I shoot him in the face with it."

Daniel stared at the kid for a prolonged moment before he pursed his lips together and nodded. Just like six months ago, he believed him.

"Good to know."

Silence fell between them again, the boy fidgeting in his ropes again. He didn't really seem to be the type of person good with standing still.

"And it doesn't work on everything," he added, irritation in his voice that had everything to do with the vampire nest they were currently strung up in, the bite on Daniel's neck, and the ropes around his torso. "It won't kill the devil. Learned that the hard way."

"The…what now?"

-o-o-o-

Sam burst into the vampires lair – literally, burst into the barn, using the Impala as a battering ram (and oh, Dean was gonna have words with his brother if he so much as scratched her paint job. They'd just finished putting her back together, damnit!) – before Dean had to explain all that much about that devil comment. Not that Elkins looked all that eager to know. He'd kind of taken Dean being from the future with a slanted look, a shrug, and a grain of salt. Not becoming vampire takeout was about as far as his interest in the known future went.

"You're late," Dean groused as Sam managed to decapitate a charging vampire. He got halfway through his brother's bonds with a bowie knife before another monster hauled him back. At least Sam managed to bury the blade into the wooden beam just before he was yanked away. Dean finished slicing the ropes himself off the embedded knife, yanking it out of the wood with his now free hands and jabbing it into the throat of an approaching vamp. It wouldn't kill him, but it sure did make him howl and back off, clutching at his neck.

"You're welcome," Sam huffed at him, swinging his machete hard as he could and sending another head rolling. Dean cut Elkins free just as Sam tossed a second short sword their way. Daniel caught it before Dean could and promptly annihilated two vampires without breaking a sweat.

Man might be old, but he certainly hadn't lost his edge.

Sam tossed Dean his own blood-soaked blade so the older Winchester could finish off the vampire still gurgling past his shredded windpipe. The last body hit the ground with brutal efficiency and Dean turned to the others, surveying a job well done.

"What took you so long?" The older of the two snarked, though there was no heat in it as he handed his brother the dripping machete back, handle first.

Sam had to sweep blood-matted bangs out of his face with a grimace that he turned into a bitchface (#7). "I stopped to check my e-mail first. I'm not the one who got himself a star role in 'Twilight: an abandoned barn production.'"

"If you ladies are finished?" The brothers stopped making faces at each other long enough to turn to Daniel, who was watching them with exasperation and a hand clamped around his neck. "I'd like to get the hell out of here sometime today."

He held his borrowed machete out to Sam, who took it and moved around the chaos and debris to the Impala's trunk. Dean used the opportunity to make a round around his lady, grumbling the entire time about abusive brothers. Sam just rolled his eyes, stowed the weapons, grabbed a med kit to toss to Daniel, and closed the trunk a little harder than necessary.

-o-o-o-

A few hours later, patched up, showered, and in a fresh change of clothes, the boys were once more in parking lot. A more populated one, now, given it was late evening and the world was still out and about. Daniel offered his hand once more, shaking each of the Winchester's in turn, thanking them for the help and, well, probably saving his life.

"I owe you one," he started with a head cant that he pointedly aimed Dean's direction, "or I would, if you hadn't lost my gun."

Dean just rolled his eyes. Daniel was mostly talk, anyhow, but he'd once been good as family to John Winchester, and that made him family to the boys too.

"Hey," the older Winchester called, not able to help himself. He nodded in Daniel's direction as he asked, "Why didn't you give dad the Colt all those years ago?"

Elkins lifted an eyebrow towards the kid. "You mean other than the fact I'd never get it back?"

Sam snorted, an understanding look in his eye. But Elkin's dropped his gaze after the potshot, a wry and bitter grin stretching tight across his lips as he thought over the question he'd asked himself a hundred times over the years.

"A lot of us get into this life through revenge. Most of us, I reckon. But we get to take that anger out on the same things that got us into this. Vamps, werewolves, ghosts. It might not be the one that killed something in us, but it feels close enough most days."

Yeah. Yeah, Dean could understand that. He still felt like that with every demon he sank Ruby's knife into.

"Problem with your father was, he didn't care about those other hunts. Oh, he got 'em done, alright. He saved more people than I could ever count, but it wasn't doing a thing for what drove him." Daniel sighed. "I never thought he'd find it; we didn't even know what that yellow-eyed bastard was. I thought… Heck, I don't know. Maybe if killing it was out of reach, he'd give up. Take you boys and live a normal life."

Silence filled the parking lot between them, the sounds of the world fading away, if only for a moment. Sam glanced at Dean, that hurt furl in his brow and his puppy dog eyes on full. Both Winchester boys understood, they really did. And they, too, knew just how futile a thought it had been, on any of their parts.

"Guess I was hoping to save him," Elkins finished with a bitter snort.

Sam let the silence linger – a moment of mourning – before he offered a good-natured smile. "You need anything, call us."

"Same," Daniel countered, though he glanced at Dean for a moment and the man from the future could tell he was thinking about taking that back, what with that devil comment and all. He didn't, though, and Dean just nodded, understanding completely.

He didn't doubt this would be the last time they saw each other.

"Keep an eye out and be careful, old man. The leader of that nest was old, he could have friends."

Daniel huffed, muttering something about whippersnappers under his breath, but he gave the kid a solid pat on the shoulder and thanked the boys again before climbing into his truck. The Winchesters watched him drive off before sliding into the Impala and pulling onto the road home as well.

-o-o-o-

Sam was fiddling with their dad's phone again on the drive back when Dean drummed his fingers along the steering wheel and announced, "I've been thinking."

"Don't hurt yourself," Sam parried immediately, earning a glare. He didn't bother looking up from the phone, entering another failed passcode. He was close, but he was tired and didn't feel up to hooking his computer up to the device for a more thorough attempt.

"Har har, you're a comedian." His brother rolled his eyes and refocused on the road. "If we're going to have eyes and ears in Heaven, we should get eyes and ears in Hell, too."

Sam blinked, not having expected that as the conversation of choice. Yeah, more than half the topics he thought were going to come up involved Cas, but not in an intellectual capacity. He'd been waiting for the emotional one, the breakdown where Dean finally couldn't hide the jitters or nerves anymore and had to fess up that, yeah, he was feeling things. Like fear or, heaven forbid, helplessness. Dean didn't really do breakdowns so much as the emotions just toppled over the edge and he freaked the hell out, usually to an audience of Sam.

But yeah, rationally, that didn't sound like such a bad plan. Sam watched his brother, phone forgotten for the moment, as he tried to figure out how two hunters could possibly get a spy in Hell. Not a bad plan, for sure, but definitely not an obvious one. Still, it came to him quickly enough. Having all their future allies written down on paper, in tandem with a having a strong visual memory, certainly helped.

Sam raised a brow in his brother's direction.

"Crossroads?"

"Crossroads," Dean confirmed, pulling the Impala off the next interstate exit. "You get the ID, I'll get the cigar box."

The car jostled as Dean took the first dirt road leading into the fields growing along the highway. "He's gonna be thrilled."

"Well," Sam reasoned as they started trolling through Nebraskan farmland looking for an intersection, "second time's gotta be at least half a charm, right?"

-o-o-o-

Crowley was in another loathsome get-together of Hell's generals (really, people were going to start talking if they kept meeting civilly like this) when the summons came through. Which was really just about the worst timing those two moronic hunters could have possibly gone for. It started as a twitch, a surface itch across his damned soul, as Lilith and Azazel debated the merit of inserting angel enemas into human flesh sacks. Really, it ought to have been funny, if they hadn't been at it for hours now, and he stuck there listening to it.

"If it's one angel, we'd still have this in the bag, but if it's all of Heaven backing him-" Lilith had her thin, little arms braced against the stone table, the center of which had been carved out as a small basin of sorts, currently filled with blood that bubbled and hissed with Azazel's voice. The Prince was stuck topside at the moment, not willing to risk getting stuck in the pit during such a crucial point in their plans, even if his rotting essence needed Hell's fires to heal the damage he'd taken from touching grace.

"If all of Heaven was in on it, the gate wouldn't be silent," Azazel answered back, his own annoyance starting to show. Lilith was acting like a petulant brat, worrying about things they couldn't bother with. Not when they had a million other things they could (and had to be) dealing with now. "There is nothing we can do about the angel or Heaven. We have the Colt; we need to be moving on the Hell Gate."

"What of our newest recruit?" Lilith asked instead, finally allowing a change of topic, but not the loss of control. She was in charge. She was Lucifer's first. It might be Azazel's plan, but it was her life they'd be offering in exchange for that reward. A reward she wouldn't live long enough to see. Therefore, she called the shots, no matter what Azazel thought of it. "If we move on that gate without Dean's soul slotted for Hell, Heaven will be wide open to stop us. We need the distraction."

"She's…catching up. When she can speak something not dead by a couple thousand years, then she'll be ready." Azazel responded, his malcontent coming through even more clearly.

"I want to meet her," the Princess demanded, the pout on her lips in complete contrast to the gleam in her eyes.

"When you're topside." The blood bubbled with Azazel's impatience, but he didn't dare say as much to Lilith's face. "I left her with a house warming gift to get her going. She needs a speed course in the twenty-first century, not to mention English and a serious makeover before she'll be any use to us."

"Go for the nose job," Crowley piped up from the side, contributing his vast wealth of helpfulness to this pointless meeting. "Our analysis department says they're all the rage right now."

"Why are you even here, Crowley?" Lilith asked accusingly, crossing her arms as she regarded the King of the Crossroads with distaste.

"Ah, my point exactly, my dear." The demon tipped his glass of Glen Craig towards her little highness. He had two hunters to string up and skin alive in repayment of the summoning currently crawling up and down his skin like ants, not to mention a yard of paperwork and actual business to attend to. "I'll just take my leave, then?"

"Wait." Azazel's voice bubbled from the blood, stopping Crowley mid step. He bit back the frustrated sigh. "Tell me about the prophet."

"What's there to tell?" The crossroads demon shrugged his shoulders, patience wearing thin but he played the game all the same. At this stage of the game, he couldn't afford to have two of Hell's most powerful demons questioning his loyalties (even if they were absolutely questionable). "He's an alcoholic little twit of a writer, holed up in the Midwestern states with an archangel propped up on his ass."

"A writer?" There was interest in the Prince's voice and Crowley internally winced. He probably could have kept that bit to himself with some success and minor fallout when it eventually came to light. Oh well, too late now.

"Teen novel stuff," Crowley answered, forcing as much nonchalance into his voice as possible. "Real trashy. Dean's full frontal in quite the steamy flashback." He waggled his eyebrows at Lilith, who looked unimpressed. With a dramatic sigh, he continue, "We haven't been able to confirm its authenticity yet-"

"It's published?"

Crowley internally grumbled and ground his teeth. "Small production, limited release. It's not very well known. Probably because it's not very good."

Azazel ignored all of his incredibly helpful reporting and got straight to the point: "What is it called?"

The crossroads King sighed again. "Supernatural."

Lilith snorted, but Azazel was apparently taking his far more seriously. "I will look into myself. If the prophet is writing his visions down, he may not realize what he is."

"It could give us an inside edge on the Winchesters," Lilith piped up, a wicked little smile in the corner of her mouth, despite the ridiculous topic of conversation. "We'd be able to follow them without having to spare a single demon."

"If it's real." Crowley kept his tone painfully indifferent, but inside he was kicking himself. He definitely could have held off revealing the prophet's incredibly, easily accessible writing for at least another couple of months. Now he had to play cleanup to a mess of his own making. "Writers embellish. It would be a shame to trust something written just so a pre-teener could get all hot and bothered over two shirtless brothers having a moment."

Lilith regarded him like he'd grown another head (well, she hadn't read any of the prophet's work, clearly). Through the blood, Azazel's exasperation was clear. "Which is why we will look into it."

Crowley just shrugged, deciding to keep the fact that the books went public months after the events actually happened – what with the prophet writing them in real time, having to edit after the completion of a book, and several weeks of publishing time. But sure, this was a resource.

'Have at 'em, ladies and gents,' he thought, sipping on his drink and going back to wishing he was anywhere but there. Well, anywhere but there or answering the summons that had upped it's game to the level of fire ants now.

"There's another thing I need from you," Azazel said, dragging Crowley away from the annoying little ringing in his ears repeating his name again and again and again and again. "Find me a human willing to offer up a little extra juice to fix my arm when he makes a deal."

Crowley had to think for a moment about what the Prince was implying (or even talking about, really. The summons was up to spiders now. Biting spiders.) Once he was on the same page, though, he was confident he could find some human schmooze willing to throw in a 'fix my demonic rival and guy about to herald in the apocalypse' clause in exchange for landing a younger wife with bigger tits or that corner office. That, or Crowley would just sneak it into the fine print. He did enjoy screwing over the inept.

"Shouldn't be a problem," he offered offhandedly. Then the Crossroads King straightened, ice clinking in his glass. "In fact, why don't I get right on that?"

When neither Lilith nor Azazel objected, the Princess going back to the problem of that angel grace again, Crowley took it as permission to leave. Not that he should have ever needed permission, damnit. He was a King! He didn't need bloody permission from anyone. In fact, he could walk right back in there and never leave. That would show them.

The spiders were now more like pissed off, aggressive jellyfish covering his entire body and Crowley decided that, just this once, he'd let those high and mighty bastards off with a silent warning while he went and taught two of the world's most suicidal hunters a lesson.

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

-A/N: Well, I know we didn't fix our Uriel problem, but I hope this turned out a good follow-up chapter to have as our back-to-back release :D

-Lilith Knowing The Final Seal: So this may just be my personal head-cannon, but I never understood Lilith not knowing what the final seal was, or her sudden panic about it, or the flimsy weird deal she tried to make with Sam, followed up by the next time we see her she seems perfectly calm about everything. Given that she faked wanting Sam dead and lined up Ruby to help him along, she's an adequate liar and often uses red herrings and misleads to get what she wants. It's my opinion she knew the entire time, and her sudden "panic" was a play at Sam. Anyway, that episode, while awesome because we met Chuck, always felt a little forced on Lilith's side to me, so I developed this head-cannon and will stick with it for this story.

-Up Next: The boys have a chat with the King of the Crossroads and strike up an informal deal of sorts. Plus, while Castiel may have left Team Free Will on its lonesome to go back to Heaven, (s)he's not the only Castiel we've got on this playing field. Dean *finally* gets his dream angel back on.

Side note, the author has to stop posting double chapters because it's really not so good for that stockpile thing. Something about supply and demand…. Income versus spending… Damn it, I knew I shouldn't have gone to art school!