Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“You look a little less dead today.”

Xal forced his eyes open, turning his head toward the kitchen archway with a bleary stare.

“You hungry?” Bobby asked, one hand on his hip and one holding a coffee mug.

Xal took a careful breath, trying not to expand his lungs too much. “I’m okay. Thanks.”

Bobby sipped the brew and smacked his lips. “Yeah, that don’t answer my question.”

“Uh—” Xal coughed, pain rippling over his ribs, “—I could eat. Just a little.”

Nodding, Bobby turned and disappeared into the kitchen. Xal’s eyes followed him as far as they could, and then they drifted back to the middle of the library. Or, more accurately, to the mattress on the floor with tangled blankets and pillows where Sam and Dean had been sleeping for the past several days. They had gone into town earlier to pick up some books on… something. They didn’t say what, and Sam just kept telling him to rest, so…

Xal felt pain in his right foot, electricity traveling up the back of his leg and into his hips. He screwed his eyes shut and muttered an old, Sumerian slur for the sexually immoral before holding his breath. He waited a beat and slowly exhaled, letting his vessel melt into the cushions.

“Here.”

Xal opened his eyes, wondering if he had drifted into the mental state he liked to call The Vacuity. “Hmm?” He saw a plate in front of his face with a ham sandwich. “Oh. Thank you.” Bracing himself, he slowly moved his left hand, eventually getting the food in his mouth. “It’s good,” he mumbled around the bread, ham, cheese, and mayo.

“Mmhmm.” Bobby set the plate on the floor by the sofa. “Don’t eat too fast.”

Xal nodded, wincing at the sharpness in the crease of his neck. Just rest. He took another bite, sinking back down and trying to ignore the sensation of heat and cold that never truly left his skin. Just don’t mess anything up, and everything will go back to normal.

“Cas, any time you wanna stop staring at the unconscious naked guy, feel free.”

“I just want to ensure he continues to breathe.”

“Well, it’s been a week. Has he stopped breathing yet?”

“No, but souls can be unpredictable. Demonic souls even more so. They are essentially created by shattering a human soul and piecing it back together with darkness. I don’t know what happens when you shatter that soul again… and I’m not sure what you’re supposed to fix it with.”

“Didn’t you fix it with grace when you kept him from dying?”

“No. Imagine you broke a vase and glued it back together. If it breaks again, and you try to fix it with a substance opposite of glue in every conceivable way, it gets difficult because the glue is in the way. No, there’s no way to remove the glue.”

“…You okay?”

“No.”

“…”

“…”

“You wanna elaborate?”

“No.”

“…Right. Awesome.”

“You said you had a lead?”

“Uh… yeah. Sam said there’s a cult in…”

Xal put his feet on the floor and pushed against the cushions to stand, grimacing as he straightened up. It hurt, but it wasn’t unbearable, and after eight days of bedridden recovery followed by three days of managing one short walk every twenty-four hours, he was mind-numbingly bored. He let the blanket fall away, figuring nudity wouldn’t matter because he was alone, just like his late-night strolls. He looked down, frowning at the blackened flesh that, while somewhat receded, still burned and throbbed, and then he scanned the library. Immediately, he knew what he wanted to do, but he wasn’t convinced it was a good idea.

It’ll be helpful for them. They’ll like it. He began grabbing books from a pile in the corner, and then from a stack on the desk, and then the floor on the opposite side of the room. He sifted through the contents, dividing them into new stacks, and then he started pulling books from the shelves. He took breaks every ten minutes or so, sitting on the couch and envisioning what he would do next. It would have been nice if he had music, but his MP3 player was still in his bag in that barn in Oregon, so all he could do was hum or mutter lyrics from songs ranging anywhere from a decade in age to three millennium.

“You still alive in h—hokay!”

Xal looked over his shoulder, standing on a chair to reach the highest shelf. “I don’t have clothes other than what I was wearing.” He glanced down at himself, briefly thinking it was good he was facing away from them.

“Boy,” Bobby sighed, rubbing his face. “What are you doing to my library?”

Xal hesitated, faced with the reality of his goal and finding himself embarrassed by it. Sure, it was helpful, but it wasn’t the kind of thing they would go out of their way to do themselves, so it was pretty stupid in retrospect. “Uh, I was just…” He pointed to the shelf on the other side of the library. “That one is history, sorted by region, and then sorted by belief system within the region. Um, and then…” he carefully got off the chair, putting a hand to his lower back and avoiding even a glance in the direction of the humans, “…over here, we have American history and lore. I put the oldest stuff at the top and the newest stuff at the bottom. I thought, you know, you want the most recent stuff as a starting point, and it’s easier to access on the bottom, so…” Clearing his throat, he shuffled to a space between the couch and one of the bookshelves that used to be empty. “I found this filing cabinet in the scrapyard, so… the top drawer is fake documentation sorted by document type, and then… um, there’s folders for specific hunters you have several documents for… and then—”

“Dude.” Dean deadpanned.

“Xal, you should lay down,” Sam said, handing his plastic bags to Dean and stepping forward. “It looks like you did a lot, so take some more time to rest.” He chuckled softly, nudging the demon toward the couch with as little pressure to the black spiderwebs as possible. “Do you have your clothes stashed somewhere?”

Wetting his lips, Xal eased onto the couch. “Not really. It’s not like I have more than one outfit.” Even if it didn’t used to be that way. “I do have an old vest I really like—” his favorite piece of clothing, though he never wore it around them, “—but it was in my bag, which is still in the barn.”

“Cas’ll remember where that was,” Dean commented. “And I’ll get you something to wear.” He turned and went into the hall with the beginning of a prayer on his lips. “Hey, Cas…”

Xal tried to grab the blanket from the foot of the couch, but it hurt to bend at the waist, so he sort of turned sideways and grabbed it with his good hand. “I was resting,” he assured, wanting to ward off any ideas he was up to something nefarious. “I wasn’t lying when I said I need rest—” he continued, making eye contact as Sam helped him wrestle with the blanket, “—I’ve just been on the couch for so long—”

“Xal.” Sam gave him a small smile. “It’s okay.” He straightened up, putting his hands on his hips as he surveyed the library. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen this room so organized, Bobby.”

Bobby rolled his eyes and set his grocery bags down at the entrance to the kitchen with a grunt. “Yeah, and now I won’t be able to find anything.”

“No, no.” Xal quickly pushed himself up and tried to stand, heart skipping, but he was stopped by large hands on his shoulders. “I labeled everything clearly. You can find it. I promise.”

Bobby frowned, seeming suspicious, but he approached the bookshelves and quickly found the masking tape Xal had written on in black Sharpie. “Holy…”

Swallowing, Xal sank back into the couch.

“Yeah, that’s pretty clear,” Bobby muttered as Sam went over and started taking his own look. “Dates… countries… monsters…”

Sam chuckled. “You’re not OCD, are you?”

I mean, to some degree. I’ve lost count of how many mental illnesses I have. I’m a walking, talking train wreck, friend, and I don’t know the ‘why’ behind most of what I do. Xal wet his lips and lifted his shoulders, the shrug sending pinpricks into his neck and over his shoulder blade.  “I just like things organized.”

Sam kept looking at him, his smile lingering, and Xal wasn’t sure what he was fishing for, but he didn’t seem particularly devious. “I bet if you had a place of your own, it’d be spotless.”

Cautious, Xal squinted and dipped his head in a miniscule nod. “Yeah. I always had clean homes.” He analyzed Sam—the faint upturn of the brow, the casual hand in the pocket, the relaxed stature—and tried to figure out whether to continue. “My first house—if you could call it that—had lots of clay pots and wooden boxes. I would carve whatever they were storing into the side of them, and I’d cluster them together based on what was in them, and—” you’re rambling about things no one cares about, “—it was just really organized.”

Sam didn’t seem put off. “How long ago was that?”

“Uh, maybe 5k?” Xal started to relax, figuring the conversation was just another attempt by Sam to perpetuate the illusion of partnership. “It was a long time ago.”

Sam opened his mouth to speak, but Dean cut him off with a sudden entrance and a bundle of clothes chucked at Xal’s head. “Here.”

Xal caught them, ignoring the pain caused by the sudden movement. “Thank you.” He separated the articles and grabbed the black boxers, trying to stand. His right leg gave immediately, dropping him back onto the cushions. “Hhh…” He forced himself up again and managed to wrestle on the boxers, green t-shirt, and brown flannel overshirt. It was extremely comfortable. He liked it.

“You’re looking a little less black today.” Dean indicated the faded, cracked patterns of darkness on Xal’s neck and collarbone.

Xal felt like it was a loaded question, so he offered a quiet, “Yeah.”

Silence settled over the room, awkward and tense. Thick. Heavy.

“Can’t believe I had a filing cabinet just sitting in the yard somewhere.” Bobby paused. “Nah. Nevermind. I can.” He tugged the top drawer open and examined its condition. “Did you find anything else good out there?”

Yes. But Xal wasn’t about to tell them about that little discovery. “There’s some more storage stuff, but it was pretty beat up.” He looked down, grabbing the hem of his shirt and tugging.

Bobby hummed, and there was another agonizing silence before Sam mercifully broke it with a conversation about hunting that quickly drew the other two in. Xal sank onto the couch, and while there was a part of him that said to pay attention and offer his assistance, there was a bigger part of him that was exhausted from the cleaning spree.

So, he shifted a bit, closed his eyes, and got back to resting.

Xal peered into the hall and wet his lips, finally confident the resident humans were asleep after hours of no thuds, no creaks, and no footsteps. He slipped out from under the blanket, bare feet carrying him to the front door. He pushed it open as quietly as he could, the late April chill biting his skin, but it wasn’t like a demon was susceptible to temperature. He started creeping across the scrapyard, using his night vision to navigate and looking around for threats even though he couldn’t sense anything malicious.

He almost felt giddy as he weaved through the broken cars, excitement swelling in his chest and distracting him from the dull ache that never really went away. He looked over his shoulder one more time, confirming the house lights were still off, and then he slipped around a rusty, pale blue Cadillac and gingerly sank to his hands and knees.

“Drysdusa,” he whispered, pressing himself against the gravel. “Pss, pss, pss.”

Immediately, a quiet mew came from under the car and a small, white kitten toddled out to greet him with a squeak. Smiling, Xal murmured a greeting in Sumerian before plucking her up and rolling onto his back so she could rest on top. He hated that position, but the cool temperature and presence of a little, purring creature helped blur the memories of a rack.

“I guess I should speak English.” He rolled slightly so he wasn’t flat. “If you’ve heard any speech in your tiny life, it was probably English.” He smiled as she pushed her head against his blackened fingers. “I’ll still use a little old tongue.” He spoke in a higher, singsong voice as he scratched between her ears and stroked her back. “Amru, amru, amru.”

She meowed incessantly, staring at him—through him, actually—with cloudy, unseeing eyes. She pushed into his hand with her face and tried to grab his wrist with her paws.

“You look like her, in a weird way. I mean, you’re a kitten and she was a woman, but…” He tilted his head slightly, able to picture Drishya with her long, raven hair and clouded pupils surrounded by rings of amber. “Your energy is like hers, even if your appearance isn’t. She was a great friend, and she—” he caught the kitten before she could topple off, “—was blind, too. But she could see things. Six thousand years, and I’ve never met a psychic more powerful than her.”

Drysdusa mewed again, approaching the edge of his torso before feeling her way up to his throat and pressing herself against it.

“Aww, amru, amru.” He chuckled, feeling a faint vibration against his vocal cords, and sighed at the night sky. “We have to figure out what to do with Lilith.” Fingers trailed through the short but no longer matted fur; he had cleaned her up that first day he found her behind the filing cabinet. “She can’t open the Cage herself, right? That’s why they needed Sam.” He sighed. “There are more than 66 seals—if there weren’t, stopping her would be much easier—so maybe we can intentionally break too many. You can’t un-break a seal, right? So—” He lifted his fist, coughing suddenly, a sound that dissolved into a curse as Drysdusa scrambled to get off him. “It’s—” cough, “—okay. Mu, mu, mu, mu, mu.” He grabbed her before she could fall and carefully placed her on the dirt beside him. “It’s okay. It was just a cough. You’re safe.”

“So, did this—”

Xal screamed and flailed.

“—psychic chick convince you to sell your soul?”

Twisting around and clutching his chest, Xal stared at Dean with wide eyes. His brain scrambled for some kind of tactical move that would keep him in his stricter owner’s good graces, and he ultimately settled on unquestioning obedience. “No.” He took a breath. “I was already a demon then.”

Dean folded his arms with his back against a rusted Pontiac. “She summoned you, then.”

“No, sir.” Xal tried to decide if he wanted to stand or stay on the ground. “I was just… I was in Uruk—uh, Mesopotamia—and we met at a festival. But she’s long dead. She can’t help us.”

“Mmhmm.” Dean gave him a lengthy stare, waiting for something more, but Xal had no idea what he was looking for. “You didn’t bring any food for it.”

Reminded of Drysdusa, Xal startled and frantically looked around, quickly finding her hiding under the car. “Um…” He watched the little ball of white on the opposite end of the undercarriage, and then he looked back at Dean. “Bobby doesn’t really have… kitten-friendly food. I was just… giving her some energy to sustain her until I c—”

“You mean the energy you’re supposed to be using to heal yourself.”

Xal winced. I knew that was coming. “It’s just a little bit. It won’t keep me from being useful.”

Seconds ticked by with green staring into bluish-gray, and then Dean sighed, pushing off the car. “Come on. I’ll get my keys, and we’ll take it to a shelter.”

“No!” Xal objected before he could stop himself. “She’s blind. No one will adopt her, and she’ll get put down.” He put his hands on the gravel. “I’ll figure something out. Just give me a week.”

Dean lifted a brow at the kneeling demon. “Really. This is what we’re doing.” He rolled his eyes. “Do you promise to feed her and take her for walks?”

Xal blinked, confused. What does—?

“You’ve got one week. Find a place for her.” Dean started toward the house, slipping his hands into his pockets, and Xal had no doubt there was a subliminal message in how casually the hunter gave the demon his back. “Can’t wait to hear all about your psychic friend.”

Xal’s heart clenched. “She’s not relevant. She died thousands of years ago.”

“Then you shouldn’t have a problem telling me everything you knew about her and what she taught you.” Dean kept walking and didn’t look back, ending the conversation regardless of whether Xal was done.

“But…” Closing his eyes, Xal sighed. It is what it is. He turned toward the Cadillac and sank to his stomach, peering underneath. “Don’t worry, Drysdusa. He’s gone.”

She stayed where she was, hunkered down in a little ball next to the right rear tire.

“Yeah. Me, too.” He folded his arms and dropped his forehead to them, nauseated by the idea of digging up his past. I’ll tell him what I can and lie about the rest. Though, he didn’t really know how much Dean overheard. I said she was a great friend, and I let emotion bleed into my voice… Swearing, he grabbed a handful of his shaggy hair, subconsciously realizing it would need to be cut soon. I guess I can’t talk to myself out loud anymore. He took a breath, intending to move on, but there was a weariness in his bones he couldn’t quite shake. This is so exhausting.

But what could he do?

“So.” Dean put a beer down in front of Xal, maybe a little too harshly, and dropped into the seat across from him. “Your psychic friend.” He held out his own bottle as if to clink tops, but Xal just stared at the beading condensation, vacant and tense. “Okay, then.” Dean took a drink.

“She’s really not relevant,” Xal said quietly, lifting his gaze until he was half a centimeter to the left of looking Dean in the eye. He was trying to look past—or maybe through—his opponent without showing how offput he was. “It was just an ancient friendship.”

Pursing his lips, Dean folded his arms on the table and tapped the side of his bottle. “Was she, you know… a friend?” He smirked.

Xal glared sharply. “Drishya and I were never like that. We were just friends. We were like siblings, if anything, so don’t… just don’t.” He scratched at the inside of his arm, struggling to keep his eyes anywhere near Dean’s face.

Drishya. I have a name. That’s progress. Taking another drink, Dean leaned back in his chair, letting his arms slide from the table to his lap. “A demon and a psychic in Mesopotamia thousands of years ago. Seems weird to remember an ‘ancient friendship’ this long if it’s not relevant anymore.”

“What?” Xal finally made eye contact, caught somewhere between disbelief and offense. “I’m sup—” He stopped himself, stiffening as his eyes shifted left again. “She was important to me.”

Dean rolled his eyes at the ‘helpless victim’ act that, for some reason, always worked on Sam. Just like the ‘saving you and helping you master your supernatural powers for totally innocent reasons’ act Ruby had played so perfectly. “What were you gonna say?”

Xal shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

Unimpressed, Dean lazily lifted his beer and took a sip, waiting.

“It… bothers me… that you think I would… forget someone I cared about just because it’s been a long time.” Xal shifted, and the longer he spoke, the more his slightly off-center gaze turned into an almost glazed one. “Drishya… was a very good friend. If I hadn’t already sold my soul, I probably would have sold it when she died just to get ten more years with her. That’s all.”

“Hmm.” Dean pursed his lips, trying to decide what he wanted to dig into. Why was she so important? Why was Xal suddenly trying to dissociate? What had the demon sold his soul for? Or maybe— “What were you doing in Mesopotamia?” He paused, and when Xal seemed to hesitate, he pushed. “They had a lot of myths about demons. You contribute to those?”

“No. I mean, we used them—or their existence, I guess, but—” Xal wet his lips, grabbing the beer Dean had put in front of him but not lifting it. He just held it, some of the life coming back into his eyes as he tried to think on his feet. “Drishya and I knew more about demons than most people. Back then, demons—or the entities people knew as demons—weren’t always malevolent. Like Kusarikku. He was a doorkeeper demon to guard against evil spirits, so Drishya and I would help people put his wards on their doors so they wouldn’t… it wasn’t…” He shook his head. “What are you asking?” He took a drink, clearly needing an excuse to not talk.

Dean spread his hands. “I already asked it: what were you doing there? How did you wind up there? Where in Mesopotamia were you?” And are you going to say Uruk again or spit out a random city?

Xal swallowed, opened his mouth to speak, took a drink instead, swallowed again, and made another attempt at speech. “I wasn’t there for any reason. I…” He clenched his jaw and closed his eyes for a moment, looking like he was in physical pain. “I was fresh out of Hell for the first time. I was in a body that wasn’t mine for the first time—no, they weren’t braindead like this one, and I’m sorry for that—and I was just… trying to figure out what to do.” He closed his eyes a little tighter, growing progressively more… distressed, Dean supposed. Tense and almost… anguished.

“So you’re trying to figure out this new body.” Dean paused, remembering the moment he crawled out of his own grave, trying to reacquaint himself with air in his lungs and sweat on his skin. “You find yourself in ancient Mesopotamia, somewhere near…?”

“Uruk,” Xal muttered.

Well, he stuck to that story, at least. “Okay, so you’re headed toward Uruk, and you…?”

Xal moved his mouth slowly. “I… I stayed close to the edge of the city… I didn’t know what to do… so I tried stuff that was familiar.” He opened his eyes but kept them on his beer. “I found out there was a… kind of a New Years festival… history remembers it as Zagmuk, but we…” He shook his head. “It sounded like the festivals I grew up with. So… I went… and, uh, and Drishya was there, and she was dancing and offering people the blessings and charms she normally bartered with. She was giving them out for free just to be—to help everyone through the coming year, and the second she saw me—well, she didn’t see me; she was blind, but… she knew I wasn’t human.” He almost continued, let his mouth hang for a second, and then shook his head. “We were friends after that.”

Dean narrowed his eyes slightly. “What were you going to say?”

Xal shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

Once again, Dean fixed him with a hard look.

“No. I said it doesn’t matter. We’re not talking about it.”

“Huh. I’m impressed.” Dean took another drink, scanning Xal’s expression. “I’m annoyed. And I’m going to get an answer eventually. But I am impressed.”

Xal looked up from the tabletop, meeting Dean’s eyes with something detached and cold in his own. “Is that all you wanted to ask me, sir?”

“Yup.” Dean’s lips twitched into a smirk. “You said something about breaking too many seals so Lilith can never be the sixty-sixth one. That’s pretty good. I’ll run it by the others.”

Xal nodded tightly and slid to his feet, abandoning his beer to duck out of the room, his right side giving a little as he walked. Dean watched him go, sipping his brew again, and he tried to decide whether he believed what he had been told. He could have known I was standing behind him in the scrapyard. He could have intentionally mentioned this psychic, either to get me to stop focusing on something else he’s doing, or because he wants us to find her. If we get wrapped up in whoever she is or what she can do…  He tilted his head. And it could give him an advantage of some kind. She might be able to break his deal with us without killing him. We can’t risk that. He took another drink and continued to observe, feeling a twinge in his left shoulder when Xal collapsed onto Bobby’s sofa with a moan. We’ll see.

“Okay, Dean. I’ll search the bag for any nefarious demon paraphernalia before I give it to him, and I’ll let you know if I find any blueprints for world domination.”

Rolling his eyes, Sam flipped open the worn, canvas bag and reached in. He found a knife on top—not surprising—and while it wasn’t the same as Ruby’s, it was engraved. He set it aside and grabbed the next thing, which was a tightly rolled piece of fabric. He unraveled it and found himself holding a black vest made of a thin but durable material. It had tarnished gold buttons down the front, and there was a cupcake and cat whiskers sewn into the breast pocket.

Huh. Sam tilted his head and set the vest with the knife. He pulled out a beat-up Walkman MP3 player next, and after glancing around to ensure the house was empty, he turned it on.

It was paused halfway through Wannabe by The Spice Girls.

He pursed his lips and hit the button to skip to the next song: 45 by Shinedown.

“Okay.” Sam nodded once and almost set the player down before noticing the battery was almost dead. I should charge it. But if he did, Xal would know his bag had been gone through. No. I’m not gonna pretend I didn’t search his bag. I’m not lying to him. He dug around until he found the charger and plugged it in, setting the Walkman on the kitchen counter. He went back to the bag and grabbed the next thing, which was a leatherbound journal, unwinding the tattered strap and lifting the cover.

Do Not:

i. Lay on your back.

ii. Drink tequila.

iii. Listen to Da Ya Think I’m Sexy? by Rod Stewart

iv. Let someone ignore your safeword.

Sam blinked, his brain doing a bit of a double take before he could get to the end of the list. It wasn’t like he didn’t know Xal had sex—“I did. Like, nine times. It was fun.”—but he never thought… especially because Xal seemed to have such intense Hell trauma. Why would he want to…?

Sam snapped the book shut and wound the strap around it, feeling he had just committed a huge breach of privacy. He had assumed the book was notes on creatures and spells—and maybe some of it was—but there was clearly more than that. And we’re not telling Dean.

Shaking off a difficult-to-pinpoint feeling, he reached into the bag once again. He pulled out a transparent purple GameBoy Color, a flask of something he didn’t dare taste, some charms and trinkets, a pocket guide to first aid, a condensed collection of American folklore… Xal had a lot. Sam looked at the growing pile, thought for a moment, and frowned. Hmm…

“Xal.” Sam spoke as he stepped over the threshold, not wanting to sneak up on the demon sprawled out on the floor with a kitten.

“Yes, s—uh, Sam?” Xal just barely caught himself, forcing a quick smile at the end.

Sam glanced down at the lockbox in his hands, and even though he had gone over his approach a thousand times in his head, he still hesitated. “Uh,” he cleared his throat, “I’m sure you noticed I went through your bag.” He tried to read the situation, and he saw Xal tense, but he cautiously continued. “I thought it seemed like a lot of stuff to carry around all the time. So…” He extended the large, black, metal contraption in his hands.

Xal frowned, pushing himself onto his knees before wincing and dropping back down. “Yowch.” He sniffed and pushed himself up again, keeping his weight on his left half. “Um…” he placed his hands on the sides. “I…”

“I just thought if there’s some stuff you don’t need with you everywhere you go, you could put in here. It’s, uh, it’s locked with a code, so it’s not like we could steal the key from you or anything. We could only get in if we figured out how to read your mind.” Chuckling softly, Sam extended it a little more, because Xal was touching it but not taking it. “We can keep it in the trunk of the Impala with our weapons and stuff. It’ll be safe, and it’ll be wherever we go, and you won’t have to shove all your stuff in your bag and carry it around.” He shrugged. “And, uh, who knows? Maybe if you have more room in your bag, you’ll collect more stuff you want to hang onto.”

Xal gave Sam a long look, caught somewhere between suspicious and scared. “Um…” He slowly shifted, taking the box. “Oof. It’s, uh, it’s hefty.”

“Yeah, of course. With our lives, you know… off-brand security doesn’t exactly get the job done.” Sam laughed again, reminding himself it was his own fault Xal had expected something cheap and easy to break into.

“I… yeah, I can put some stuff in here.” Xal sank back into a sitting position, grunting quietly as he shifted to stretch out his right leg. He kept his hands on the box, moving them slightly, like he wanted to feel for sigils and traps but didn’t want to get caught doing so. “Thanks, Sam.” His lips twitched into a faint smile, and he never took his eyes off the box.

Sam smiled, too, despite Xal not looking at him. “You’re welcome.” He opened his mouth to further the conversation but decided the best thing to do was take the win and give Xal some space. “I’m gonna order some pizzas. Sound good?”

“Yeah…” Xal mumbled absently.

Sam walked toward the kitchen, glancing skyward. Please, let that help.

“Xochiquetzal.”

Tired—though less so every day—Xal looked up from his spot on the couch and offered himself. “What can I do for you?”

“Something unfortunate has happened.” Castiel spoke as plainly as ever, entirely unblinking, somehow seeming both normal and off. “The family that was going to take Drysdusa found out their child is allergic to cats.”

Confused but cautiously hopeful, Xal tilted his head, feeling the steady vibration of the kitten in question purring against his hands and chest. “How did they find out their kid is allergic to cats if they didn’t… get… a cat?”

“Because…” Despite his halting words, Castiel maintained eye contact, and his confidence didn’t waver in the slightest. “They encountered a stray, and the girl had an allergic response.”

Pretty sure he meant reaction. Xal looked at the ball of white he was holding to his sternum, which he had done to keep her on his chest without forcing himself to lay fully on his back. “I already said I’m not taking her to a shelter. I’ll fight all four of you on that.” He drew his legs up slightly, ready to form a ball of his own. “You need to give me another week to find her a home.” Which meant one more week with Drysdusa, which made him very happy.

“That won’t be necessary. Finding her a permanent home is getting distracting, and we need to focus on Lilith.” Castiel opened his mouth to continue, but Xal cut him off with bared teeth.

“Don’t even think about touching her, sanctus velatos!”

Castiel kept his stoic expression for a split second, and then he viciously glared as he snarled out a, “Watch your mouth, diaboli meretrix! I was commanding battalions centuries before you even clawed your way out of the Pit, pusillus, so don’t presume you have the authority to tell me anything.”

Xal spat out another insult, but it was an insult that wasn’t technically real because it was just a made-up word he and a few friends of his had started using it to refer to some boys they didn’t like in Louisiana in the 1830s, so he didn’t know if Castiel actually knew what it meant.

Regardless, Castiel got even angrier and almost responded but stopped himself. He closed his eyes, took a breath, and opened them again with a simple, “We’ve come up with a solution.”

Xal curled protectively as he waited for the so-called solution to be announced.

“We’re going to keep her.”

Xal blinked. “Uh…”

“It’s the most convenient conclusion to the situation.” Castiel let his eyes wander up toward the ceiling, somehow expressing both disinterest and sheepishness.

Looking down at the little creature—companion?—Xal frowned. “Like… with Bobby?”

“No.” Castiel brought his eyes back down, looking at Xal with an unreadable face. “You know many enchantments. Enchant her to keep her safe and so you know where she is, and—”

“You want me to keep her?” Xal felt a jump in his chest, and he hated that he couldn’t figure out what was going on in Castiel’s head.

“Yes. That is the plan.”

Xal blinked again. “Uh—”

“Hey, Cas!” Dean strode into the room. “I’ve got a question about grace. Sam and I were tal—”

“You said I’m supposed to keep Drysdusa?” Xal asked, incredibly confused and trying not to hope.

Dean also seemed confused, though, and that probably wasn’t good. “What?”

“Yes,” Castiel answered, his voice overlapping Dean’s. “Dean said you should keep Drysdusa. So did Sam. They both did.”

Silence.

“Nnnooo we—”

“Yes, Dean. You did.” Castiel leveled a glare at his opponent. “Xochiquetzal is keeping Drysdusa. We decided that. Together.”

Xal stared. He was so confused. He held the kitten—his kitten?—a little tighter. What is happening?

“We’re not keeping a little furball in my baby.”

“Yes, we are.”

“No, we—”

Castiel walked over to Dean, drawing himself up to his full height and growling out an order. “Yes. We. Are.”

Dean floundered, mouth agape.

Castiel turned back toward Xal, as calm and collected as ever. “I would like to pet her.”

Staring, blinking, mouth open—basically, looking very much like Dean did in that moment—Xal nodded his permission.

“Excellent.” Castiel walked to the couch, reaching out and scratching Drysdusa between the ears. “Very enjoyable. Thank you.” He looked at Dean. “We do not have time to squabble over a small cat. I have a lead on Lilith.”

“Uh—” Dean looked between the two supernatural creatures. “O-okay. I’ll get Sam and Bobby, and we can… go over what you have.”

Xal pushed himself up on his elbows. “I can help. Just let me—”

“You rest. Keep sleeping, or reading, or petting your furry rat, or whatever.” Dean waved it off, turning to walk out, and Castiel trailed after him.

Xal watched them leave, sinking back down onto the cushions, and for the first time in a long time, his lips pulled into a smile. “I guess you’re sticking around for a little bit.”

Drysdusa purred, completely content.

“Hey, hey, hey.”

Xal gasped, jolting awake with his blanket and the couch cushions balled in his fists, blue-gray eyes darting around as he tried to figure out how he got from Hell to a couch in a tenth of a second.

“You’re okay.” It was Sam, his hand resting on the center of Xal’s back. “It was just a dream.”

Shuddering, still able to feel the acid in his eyes and the hooks in his skin, he tried to feign nonchalance. “I’m good. Thanks.”

“I thought you didn’t sleep.” Sam moved his hand away. “I’m not accusing. I just want to make sure you’re not doing worse than we realize.”

Xal offered a small smile. “It’s not really sleeping. It’s like a coma.” It was The Vacuity. “I just had sort of a vivid hallucination… thing.”

Sam rested his hands in his lap, kneeling by the sofa. “What was it about?”

“It was just…” wetting his lips, Xal considered the situation and decided Sam would be kind because there was no downside to it. “Just some old memories.”

“Hell ones? Or topside ones?”

Xal wet his lips. “Hell. I think. Honestly, there are so many…” images from wars with dirt under his feet, and the cracking of a master’s whip, and fire, and racks, and knives caked with blood, “…and they all blur together.”

“How much of the past 6,000 years did you spend in Hell?” Sam sounded curious, but there was something sad in his eyes, his hands sort of clasped in his lap, like he didn’t know what to do with them.

“Oh, I…” Xal closed his eyes. “It’s hard with the way Hell time works.” Crinkling his nose, he tilted his head and opened his eyes again. “I mean, between my stint in the seventies and when I got out of the Hell Gate alone, it was almost thirty-five hundred years.”

Sam’s eyes widened, shock warping his features. “Oh. I… never really did the math.”

Xal shrugged. “The wheel in the sky keeps on turning.”

Struggling for a moment, Sam managed to find his voice. “What did you do in the seventies?”

“Drugs.” Xal snorted a laugh and shook his head before dropping it onto his folded arms. “Worked in a diner during the day, partied on the weekends… and most weeknights. Learned a lot of dances, how to bake, how to touchtype on a typewriter… it was a busy decade.”

Sam smiled. “That sounds cool.” He paused. “How did you take it when Elvis died?”

“I didn’t really care, but I worked with a girl who spent the whole day trying—and failing—not to cry.” He tilted his head, a faint smile pulling on his lips as he remembered standing in the kitchen with his arms around Tiffany. “She was really heartbroken, so I told her to go home, and then I went by after work and gave her my tips for the day.”

Sam’s eyes widened slightly. “That was… kind.”

Xal shrugged, sliding his arms so he could put his cheek against the cushion. “It’s not like I needed groceries.”

“So… why did you have a job?”

Xal crinkled his brow. “I still needed to pay rent. Had to put gas in my tank and buy clothes… tech and toys and dumb stuff I found interesting.” He shrugged. “Besides… I liked the experience.”

Sam pursed his lips thoughtfully and gave a sideways kind of nod. “I can see that.” But he didn’t look like he saw it. He looked like he wasn’t sure what to say.

“Did you, ah… need… something?” Xal flexed his right foot in an attempt to ease the never-ending ache.

Sam shook his head. “No. I just came down for a drink and heard you moaning.” He stood up, giving Xal a faint smile. “Are you sure I can’t help in any way?”

Cautious, Xal gave a nod.

“Okay. Thanks for talking to me.” Sam’s soft expression lingered, and then he went into the kitchen.

Xal watched him leave and then fully dissolved into the sofa. He looked down the length of the couch, where Drysdusa was curled up by his feet and happily sleeping. I guess I should keep resting. He shifted slightly, unable to describe the comfort it brought him to have cushions pressed against his stomach. Hopefully, I won’t drift off again.

“Crowley, huh?”

Xal froze, a chill running up his spine before being immediately drowned in a rush of heat. It was a long time ago. Shockingly, the combination of fury and fear didn’t care about that. He kept his breathing calm regardless, watching from the couch as Castiel continued the update.

“That is the name I was given.” Castiel stood as rigid as ever, shoulders squared and hands hanging at his sides. “We don’t know exactly what his role in Lilith’s recent activity is, but he’s the King of the Crossroads. He would certainly be involved, and my source says he’s been active.”

“Huh. Hey, uh, Hellcat, do—”

“Hellcat?” Sam looked at Dean, weirded out and mildly concerned.

Bobby leaned back against his desk, arms crossed and brow raised.

“I…” Dean lifted his hands. “I don’t know, okay?” He looked between the three of them. “It just came out. He’s—he’s from Hell, he’s got a cat, he’s—does it matter?”

Castiel cocked his head. “I like it.”

“Thank you, Cas.” Dean exhaled hard.

Sam gestured vaguely. “Yeah, if the completely socially unaware celestial being says the nickname isn’t weird, then it’s totally not weird.”

“You know what?” Dean looked at Sam, opening his mouth and looking like he was going to yell, and then he cut himself off and turned back toward the couch. “Hellcat, you know anything about this Crowley guy?”

Xal shrugged, grateful for the lighthearted conversation that had helped to ease some of the incessant twisting in his gut. “I know the name, but I never really met him.” Oh, that was going to come back to rip his toenails off. “I can try and learn about him, though.”

Sam gave him a cautious look. “Only if you’re fully recovered.”

Xal nodded. “Yeah. I’m fine.” He looked down at his lap, where Drysdysa purred happily. “Maybe…” he started, but his voice was quiet, and they had already started talking again. I don’t want you to get hurt. He didn’t want himself to get hurt, either.

He needed a plan.

But even if he could come up with a plan to protect her, what plan would protect him? They were going to find Crowley—of course they were, they were them—and Crowley wasn’t going to pretend he was a stranger. Knowing him, he would do the exact opposite and rub their past in Xal’s face as obnoxiously as he could because that was what he did every time they crossed paths.

But I already lied. If he backpedaled now, they wouldn’t trust him. They don’t trust you anyway, moron. But what if they asked for details? What if they wanted to know how Xal knew Crowley? No, that wasn’t even a what-if; it was guaranteed. What do I do? He held Drysdusa a little tighter. Maybe I can keep Crowley from finding out I’m even with the Winchesters. I could just stay behind or stay hidden every time they confront him. He swallowed. If I put it off, it’s going to be worse, but I don’t know how to handle the fallout right now. I can’t handle the fallout right now.

“Hey, Hellcat.”

Xal startled, eyes quickly finding a suspicious Dean. “Yes, sir?”

“You don’t look so hot. Anything you wanna share with the class?”

Tell them. If you tell them, you can get it over with. Xal flashed a tight smile. “Just had some pain shoot up my spine.” Idiot.

Dean clearly didn’t believe what he had just heard, but he let it slide, shifting his attention back to the group. “So, what? We just start tearing through demons until we get a helpful one?”

This is not going to end well.

Chapter Text

“Bobby?” Xal stopped just inside the library, holding Drysdusa to his chest.

Bobby finished writing his sentence before looking up from the desk with a, “Yeah?”

“Could you…” he wet his lips, “…help me with a… project? Kind of?” He winced at his own wording, but he didn’t want to tip his hand until he had some kind of agreement.

Surprisingly, Bobby kept his suspicion to an eyebrow raise. “That’s certainly a question.” He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “What’cha need, boy?”

Xal swallowed. “I want to make a protection ward…” or ten, “…for Drysdusa.” He glanced down at her. “I just figure things are gonna get pretty dangerous, and she’s blind, so that makes it worse, and, uh, I know what I want to try, but it has to be a lot stronger than it naturally is, and—”

“You wanna ward the cat,” Bobby intoned dryly.

“Kitten,” Xal corrected weakly.

Bobby dipped his head slightly. “You wanna ward the kitten.” He paused, thought for a moment, and then sighed. “Okay. What are we looking at?”

Cautiously hopeful, Xal approached the desk and put Drysdusa on top, scratching her sides. “I need to make her my familiar.” He quickly decided he didn’t want her too close to Bobby and pulled her against his chest again.

Bobby didn’t seem to notice and focused on the conversation, arching a brow. “Like a witch’s familiar?” He paused but continued before Xal could answer. “Makes sense. Have a connection, heighten her senses, give her some fortification…” He nodded, accepting the idea. “What else?”

“A soul bond. It will keep her from dying before me by automatically pulling from my soul to keep her alive.” Xal barely took a breath. “I also want to put a forcefield around her. I used to be able to make a field that could sense malicious intent and automatically activate.”

Bobby pursed his lips. “So, it wouldn’t protect from a stray bullet or a fall down the stairs, but it would protect from an intentionally fired bullet or a push down the stairs.”

“Exactly. And then we’ll need another ward to suppress the energy given off by all these other wards so supernatural creatures won’t realize she’s not a normal kitten.” Xal rubbed her head a few times, smiling when she nibbled on his fingertips. “But some of these spells I haven’t used in a long time. I… don’t even know if they’re going to work, honestly.”

“Won’t know until we try.” Bobby gestured toward the kitchen. “Drag a chair in here, and we’ll start drawing up some plans.”

Xal felt a spark of excitement and something warm in his chest. “Okay.”

“Seems like this Crowley guy is going out of his way to get our attention.” Dean frowned, leaning back against the wall with his arms crossed. “He wants us to find him.”

“Maybe.” Sam offered a shrug from his side of the library. “It could be some kind of trap.”

Dean looked at the almost entirely recovered demon sitting on the couch. “Hey, Hellcat. Is Crowley the kinda guy who plays games?”

Xal turned his head toward Dean, and he had a look in his eye that Dean had been struggling to decipher for weeks now. It wasn’t dead and lifeless, but it was apathetic, and it wasn’t whimpering and pleading, but it was submissive, and it wasn’t the abject terror it had been before, but it was cautious and tense. Dean had spent the last several days trying to figure out what it meant—trying to figure out if the demon was wearing it on purpose or didn’t even know it was there—and until he could do that, he wasn’t sure what to expect.

“I think most demons are game-players, and if he’s in a high position…” Xal gave a sideways kind of nod. “Yeah, he probably used a lot of mind tricks and backstabbing to get there.”

“Makes sense.” Dean’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. He knows more about Crowley than he’s letting on. How much more, Dean wasn’t sure, but it was more.

“We have to out-play him, then.” Sam paused. “We need a backup plan.”

Bobby snorted, adjusting his ballcap. “Like what?”

Castiel stared at the floor, thoughtful. “Maybe we could split into groups. Make it seem like some of us are in the location we believe Crowley is while others are looking somewhere else, when in reality, we’re all in the same place.”

Xal shook his head. “If he knows enough about our movements to be leaving such an obvious trail, he knows enough to confirm if we’re all in the same town.” His eyes flickered to Dean, then Sam, and then the floor.

“Well, he hasn’t come knocking, and he definitely knows we’re in Sioux Falls.” If the seven cases of demonic activity all happening twenty to thirty miles away from Sioux Falls in various directions wasn’t proof, Dean didn’t know what was. “So, he wants something from us.”

“Leverage?” Sam offered.

Bobby shook his head. “That brings back the ‘why hasn’t he come knocking yet’ issue.”

“We’re pretty guarded in here,” Sam countered. “And we have the panic room.”

“Well, why would he wait until there’s a pattern to let us know he’s up to something?” Xal shifted his bare feet, one of which was still dark gray, against the floor. “Even if Bobby and I have been here, all three of you went to that first case of demonic activity, so he could have just grabbed you then and waited for us to come get you.”

Dean snapped his fingers and pointed to Xal. “What he said. He doesn’t just want to get his hands on us, he wants us to know it’s coming.” He looked at Sam and Castiel, who were both by the archway to the hall. “So, we can keep playing the game on his terms and wait to see what he does, or we can go on the offensive, and the next time he gives us a clue...”

“We go for the throat,” Sam finished with a nod.

“And hope we don’t die,” Bobby tacked on sarcastically.

Dean smirked, but he didn’t miss the way Xal glanced off to the side, and the hunter couldn’t be completely sure, but he thought he saw the demon’s throat bobbing. Great. Dean rolled his eyes internally, keeping his outward expression engaged in whatever Castiel was adding to the conversation. Can’t wait to find out what you’re hiding, Hellcat.

Xal took a deep breath, looking up at the building where Crowley was supposedly waiting for them. It’s all gonna come out. He swallowed and tried to calm his racing heart, bluish eyes flickering across the two-story, Victorian home. They’re gonna kill me. Not literally, but they would make him wish they would. Maybe I should tell them. But he couldn’t. He didn’t want to talk about it; didn’t want to think about it. Once they know, they’re going to make you talk, anyway.

“You look like you’ve seen a vengeful spirit.” Sam slowed as they walked the length of rotted picket fence toward the old home. “What’s wrong?”

Xal forced a quick smile. “Just not sure what to expect.” He licked his upper lip. “King of the Crossroads… sounds pretty powerful.”

Sam smiled back, not nearly as forced, but tainted with sadness and guilt. “Well, we’re not gonna leave you behind this time.”

“Mmhmm.” Xal didn’t bother making eye contact because he knew he couldn’t feign the confidence or sincerity to go with it. Maybe I should tell Sam. Even if I just say something to hint that there might be some not-so-great discoveries—

But what if Crowley didn’t say anything? What if he had something else up his sleeve? It would be just like him to find Xal after the fact and tell him if he didn’t behave, Crowley was going to tell the Winchesters everything.

What do I do? What do I do?

Dean pulled the gate open, and Bobby moved in with Dean sticking to his side, followed by Castiel, and then Sam with Xal in the back. They walked the concrete and stone path up to the wooden steps, and Castiel started to deviate.

“I’m going to look around the back for—”

“Nope.” Dean shut the idea down immediately. “We already decided we’re sticking together. He knows we’re coming, he knows we’re here, and we know he doesn’t want to kill us. Get your butt over here.”

Xal focused on breathing, footsteps halting and arms stiff at his sides. They went onto the raised porch, through the front door, and it was silently determined they would spread out, but only a little. Dean poked his head into the living room on the right, and Bobby leaned toward the library on the left, all of them looking around and examining the rooms without entering them.

Bluish eyes drifted over the moldy, water-stained wallpaper and hardwood floors. It was dim, but even if Xal didn’t have demonic sight, he was pretty sure the morning sun streaming through the sheers would be enough to see by. There were oil paintings on the walls, and the blue and yellow flowers somehow brought him a sense of peace as they made their way through the second floor.

“Hello, boys.”

And then the peace shattered.

“You certainly took your sweet time.” Crowley smirked from where he lounged behind a desk, idly toying with a chess piece.

Dean took the lead with a scoff and a, “Yeah, traffic was terrible. Where are your minions?”

Crowley ignored the question, eyes drifting to the back of the group. “Xael. Long time, no see. How have you been?”

Trying to ignore the tension that could now be cut with a knife, Xal folded his arms over his chest. “Every day that passed without thinking of you was a good one, so I’ve been great.”

“You wound me,” Crowley replied, not quite dry but lacking any sincerity, and then he looked at Dean again. “But Xael’s just an old trophy; hardly worth talking about. We need to chat.”

Xal kept his eyes on Crowley, partly because of his lacking trust in the creature, but mostly because he was terrified of catching one of his handlers’ eyes.

“Chat about what?” Sam asked, feigning a casual air.

“Lilith, of course.” Crowley steepled his fingers, resting them on his stomach as he casually turned the leather-padded chair from side to side. “I have a way to get rid of her, but my opportunities to employ it are… limited.”

Dean snorted. “Right. King of the Crossroads wants the Demon Queen dead.”

Sighing theatrically, Crowley rolled his eyes. “You might not know this, seeing as you’ve never had a corporate job, but you don’t become CEO by playing nice.”

Xal tensed, and as much as he hated the thought of Crowley being in charge, he would have preferred Crowley over Lilith any day.

Bobby snorted. “You want us to help you take over Hell?”

“No, no, Hades, no.” Crowley waved a hand in the air. “I want you to help yourselves. It just so happens I’ll be benefitting from your success as well.”

Castiel’s voice came out almost as flat as usual, but there was a tinge of suspicion in it. “An act that would put us back into our current situation, no doubt.”

“Do you think it will, Xael?”

Xal narrowed his eyes, meeting Crowley’s gaze evenly. “I have no idea. I don’t know you. I cross paths with you once every couple hundred years, and I spend the rest of my time forgetting you exist.”

“Oh, Xael. You and I both know you’ve never been able to forget me.” Crowley smirked when Xal growled, but then he lifted one hand as his expression shifted to a faux surrender. “Fine, fine. We’ll play pretend. Because even if you don’t know me, you know about me. I can’t imagine you wouldn’t, given our… history.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Xal snarled, baring his teeth and hoping the lie wasn’t obvious. “Just talk to them and leave me alone.”

“What do you know about him?” Dean demanded, clearly unhappy.

Silently swearing, Xal proceeded as carefully as he could. “He’s a salesman, and he definitely doesn’t care about serving anyone other than himself. If he were in charge, he wouldn’t try to find another way to free Lucifer because Lucifer is a threat to him. Lilith is devoted to Lucifer, but Crowley is devoted to Crowley.”

Crowley smirked, polishing his nails on the lapel of his wool coat.

“I know—” he swallowed, his throat dry, “—that Lilith holds all the contracts, so she would work closely with Crowley, because he’s the one running the way the Crossroads Deals are made. But I have no idea what kind of relationship they do or don’t have. I don’t know if she’s ever tried to get rid of him, or vice versa.” Heat spread through his chest as Crowley continued to look at him, his facial expression unchanged, but his very essence—something the humans in the room probably weren’t attuned to—was lofty and mocking. “I wasn’t lying. I don’t know him.” He stepped forward, claws forming from his fingertips. “So stop trying to convince them I know you when the only thing I know—” he slammed his hands on the desk, “is how much I’d like to strap you to a rack and skin you!”

“Ooh, spicy.”

Xal growled and lunged forward, but two arms wound around his waist and pulled him back.

“Xochiquetzal, stop.”

Digging his claws into Castiel’s arms, Xal pulled against the hold, but it was a weak struggle. He knew it wasn’t a good idea to fly off the handle, but when he saw those coldly amused eyes and felt the energy in the room shaking with laughter, he just—

“Xal seems to hate your guts,” Sam mused, voice both cautious and calculating, “but he thinks it would be better to deal with you than Lilith. Because you’re weaker?”

“You wound me,” was the flat response, dark eyes rolling. “If I’m trying to solicit help from a band of humans and two supernatural dropouts, I would think my power level in comparison to hers would be obvious.” He pushed himself to his feet and strolled over to the bookshelf on his right. “If I had to guess, Xael would prefer me because of our similarities when it comes to obtaining power.”

Castiel tightened his hold on Xal’s waist, unbothered by the talons in his forearms. “Elaborate.”

“We achieve a certain goal, and we generally remain satisfied with it.” Crowley toyed with the white bishop, tossing it in the air and catching it repeatedly. “Xael has immortality and powers, and he’s content with that, so he doesn’t try to climb the ladder. Likewise, once I take Lilith’s place, I don’t intend to keep climbing. I’m a businessman—a politician, at the worst—not a supervillain. Once you reach a certain level of success, continuing to ascend takes far more effort than its worth, and as long as you don’t have a fragile ego or something to prove, there’s really no point in expending that effort.”

“And we’re just supposed to take your word for it, huh?” Dean paused, and out of the corner of his eye, Xal though he saw the hunter adjust his hold on the demon-killing knife. “Just trust you in good faith?”

Crowley chuckled. “Well, you’re certainly welcome to take a second and think it over, but intentions can’t be proven. You know that.”

Xal pulled against Castiel’s hold. “Knowing you, you’ll change the entire deal-making process to make it more efficient. Like you said, you’re a businessman. You want sales through the roof.”

“It’s better than the alternative. You either get me taking advantage of people stupid enough to go through the steps of summoning my employees, or you get Lilith torturing and killing people who don’t go looking for it.” Crowley shrugged, tossing the bishop in the air and flicking his hand, telekinesis sending the piece flying through the opposite wall. “Regardless of what you do, you’re not going to stop hunting Lilith, and when you finally get her, I’m going to be taking her place. It’s just a matter of taking the slow way, where you bumbling morons put together some hodgepodge plan that just barely works, or the quick way, where I give you the means and you provide the ends.”

“Dean,” Sam started softly, a willingness to consider in his voice. “He has a point.”

Dean wasn’t convinced, and he never took his eyes off Crowley; not even when the bishop splintered the wood and plaster. “I don’t care. I’m not making a deal with him.”

Crowley chuckled. “You technically already did.”

Dean tensed.

“Lilith gave me your contract to hold onto, given how… special it was.”

Sam and Bobby barely kept Dean from launching himself across the room, managing to stop him before Sam begged a question of his own. “By your own admission, you work directly with Lilith. Why should we believe you’re not working with her right now?”

“You shouldn’t. That would be incredibly idiotic.” Crowley slipped his hands into his pockets. “Almost as idiotic as me trying to trick you in such a blatant and obvious way.”

“Yeah,” Bobby scoffed, unphased. “Like that would keep you from trying it.”

Xal couldn’t help but smirk at that, the dig erasing some of the heat in his veins. He relaxed a bit, no longer pushing against Castiel’s hold, and as a result, the angel let him go.

“We need some time to think.” Sam, ever the analytical one, kept a hand on Dean’s shoulder, no doubt to prevent a fight. “Just let us—”

“I’m not going to set up a new time and place to meet you. Clock’s ticking.”

Dean looked at Sam, a silent conversation passing between them, and then he looked at Bobby. Xal made sure his eyes were back on Crowley before the trio looked his way again.

“What’s your history with Xal?” Dean asked.

Xal didn’t let himself break eye contact, heart pounding.

Crowley smirked. “Little Xael took my virginity.”

“What the—?”

“Not that virginity!” Xal rushed, looking at the humans with a note of panic.

“There is more than one kind of virginity?” Castiel whispered, thoroughly confused.

Crowley chuckled. “He was my first deal. Thousands of rotations ago, when I was just an entry-level sales rep, I talked him into a contract.” He let out an almost whimsical sigh. “And look at us now.”

Xal swallowed, trying to stare the demon down but finding it hard not to remember the moment they shook hands. “He was my deal holder. That’s all. It was thousands of years ago, and there has never been a person I wanted to destroy more. I’m not going to choose him over you.” He looked at Dean, eyes desperate and pleading. “I’m not on his side. I promise.”

“Right.” Dean glared at the King of the Crossroads. “I’m not signing a contract. You can work with us on a case-by-case basis. You blink wrong, and you’re at the top of the hit list.”

“You’re such a flirt.” Crowley reached into his pocket and tossed a key to Dean. “Check the desk drawer. I think you’ll find it helpful. I’ll be in touch.”

Suddenly, the room was down to five occupants, and Xal swallowed as discreetly as possible before turning to Dean with a rushed, “I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t have—”

“This trust thing goes both ways.” Dena’s voice was hard, green eyes unwavering. “You can’t hide intel and expect us to treat you like part of the team.”

But I’m not part of the team. “I didn’t think… I didn’t want…” Xal sighed, averting his eyes. He knew he didn’t have a good excuse—not good enough for them, that is—so he offered a feeble, “I was hoping it wouldn’t matter.”

Dean didn’t respond right away, and even though he wasn’t yelling, his face made it very clear how he felt about the turn of events. “What else should we know about you and Crowley?”

“There really isn’t anything else. I bump into him sometimes, but I do all I can to avoid him. About a  thousand years ago, he tried to convince me to become a crossroads demon, and I told him to… do unsavory things with a mule.” Clearing his throat, Xal scratched at his thighs, claws slowly melting back into fingers the longer he went without Crowley in the room. “I know sales went up when he was promoted. He’s good at his job.” He shrugged helplessly.

Sam moved closer but stayed a half-step behind Dean. “What did you get for it?”

Heat rushed to his cheeks. “It was a dumb thing. It doesn’t matter.”

It was silent, everyone simultaneously telling him his answer wasn’t acceptable.

“It was…” Xal rubbed his face, trying to hide it more than anything. “It was a meal. With meat. I had never had meat before.”

There was more silence, but it was a different variety, and then Dean’s voice broke it.

“You sold your soul… for some chicken nuggets?”

Xal kept his head down. “It was lamb.”

“You sold your so—”

“I was really hungry.” Xal held out one hand, trying to physically push the discussion away, his right palm pressing his eye to the point he saw stars. “It was stupid. It was dumb. I know that. You don’t have to—”

Sam’s voice cut in, much calmer and kinder than Dean’s. “How old were you?”

“It doesn’t really matter, does it?” Xal looked at the younger brother with something like desperation in his eyes. “It was an idiotic thing to do no matter what, so—”

“How old were you?” Sam repeated simply, no additional insistence in his voice.

Xal hooked his thumbs in his pockets and looked up at the ceiling, groaning theatrically to hide the insecurities and memories coursing through him. “I was eight. Okay? I was eight, I was stupid, I was hungry and poor and never tasted lamb before, and did I mention I was stupid?” He started speaking faster, face turned to the floor and redder by the second, caught in a downhill tumble of wanting to keep his mouth shut because he was embarrassed and wanting to explain the context in detail because he was embarrassed. “I didn’t even know what a soul was. I didn’t understand life and death and—and all I knew about supernatural entities was that every other week, we would light stuff on fire that made us really high, only I didn’t know what high was back then, I just knew it felt good, and we would dance around, and it was supposed to give us protection and connect our souls to the heavens because the smoke went up, and you wanted your soul to go up because that’s where the heavens were, and if you didn’t go up with the smoke you got dragged down into the waters, and nobody wanted to go down there, but I didn’t know there was actually something down there, it was just like being afraid of the dark, and there was no concept of—”

“Hey, hey, hey.” Sam took Xal by the shoulders and lowered his voice. “Deep breath.”

Xal put his chin to his chest, heart racing, skin burning, soul twisting. “I’m not gonna do anything he asks. If he tells me anything, I’ll tell you right away. I hate him—I despise him—and you don’t have to worry about me going behind your back to cooperate with him. I promise.”

Sam didn’t jump to respond, speaking carefully. “I’m… not worried about you working with him. I don’t think you’ll do that.” He squeezed Xal’s upper arms. “If someone took advantage of me like that, I don’t think I would be willing to do anything for them, either.”

“Please don’t make me talk about it.” Xal swallowed, sensing the sympathetic, personal-therapist approach Sam was trying to take.

“…I won’t.” Sam squeezed again and let go of Xal’s arms. “What’s in the drawer, Dean?”

Sensing the conversation was over, Dean walked around the desk and leaned down with the key to unlock the drawer. He fought with it for a moment and pulled it open, swearing immediately. “It’s the Colt.” He lifted the weapon from the compartment. “We might actually be able to kill Lilith with this.”

“And if we kill her before the right number of seals are broken,” Sam continued the thought, a sense of excitement in his voice as he turned toward his brother, “this whole thing gets derailed.”

Bobby approached the desk, holding a hand out for the relic. “It’s supposed to be able to kill anything, but…” he sucked air through his teeth, tilting his head, “…might not be smart to put all our eggs in one basket.”

Xal took a couple steps toward the closest wall, slipping his arms around his stomach as he faded into the background. I knew this was going to happen. He clutched his black sweatshirt, knuckles white against the fabric. Why did it have to be him? Of everyone who could help them get out of this mess, why did it have to be Crowley? He shuddered through a breath, but he kept the inhale discreet enough that no one could tell. Not that they were looking, but that wasn’t the point. They could glance over at any given moment, and he didn’t know when that moment might be, so he had to act as if they were watching everything.

“Hello, there, little one. You’ve wandered pretty far from the village.”

Screwing his eyes shut, Xal willed every thought, every image, every smell out of his mind. It’s in the past. It doesn’t matter. He wet his lips and straightened up, taking another breath. “It should be able to kill Lilith.” He kept his eyes on the doorway they had originally come through, not ready to make accidental eye contact. “Sam was supposed to kill her with his powers, which work on regular demons, and based on what you told me about your encounters with her, regular demon weapons like a trap or the knife have at least some kind of effect. It might not do to her what it does to a regular demon, but it does do something. If there’s a creature out there the Colt can’t kill, I’m going to bet it’s too powerful to be affected by the things that would harm or kill the lowest ranking members of its species.”

“I would agree with Xochiquetzal on that.” Castiel didn’t even glance in the demon’s direction. Of course, he didn’t blink or breathe or twitch his brow, either. “For example, if an archangel could be wounded by a regular angel blade, I would be even more confident something like the Colt could kill them. It lowers them on the scale of invincibility.”

“So, if you’re both saying it’s likely this can kill her…”

Xal wet his lips, gaze drifting down to his black boots. He wanted to go back to the Impala and get Drysdusa. They didn’t need him anymore, right? They’re not going to let you out of their sight after what just happened. You’re lucky Dean didn’t kill you. He swallowed, twisting his fists in his sweatshirt a little more. He can’t kill you. If he kills you, you go back to Hell. But Castiel can kill you. Bobby can kill you. You only made the deal with the Winchesters, so—

“Hey!”

Startling, Xal jerked his head up and found Dean standing in front of him.

“Earth to Hellcat, come in Hellcat. Do you copy?”

Xal nodded, unable to speak.

“We’re getting out of here.” Dean jerked his head toward the door. “We don’t wanna be here if Crowley decides to send his goons to clean up after him.”

All Xal could do was offer another tense, wordless nod and follow them out of the building.

“I hope you realize you are the only thing standing between Xal and a serious beatdown right now.” Dean took another swig of beer and slammed the bottle down. “He knew Crowley, and he said he didn’t.”

“I know,” Sam uttered softly, looking into his own, essentially untouched beverage.

Dean continued as if he hadn’t heard. “And we’re not talking ‘met for a drink five hundred years ago’ knew him. Crowley wrote his freaking contract. Sealed the deal with him.” His face screwed up. “You don’t think they still use a kiss for that, right? I mean, the kid was eight. That’s… eugh.”

Sam sighed, tapping the side of his bottle as his eyes drifted around the bar. “If you were in his position, would you admit to knowing Crowley?”

“I’m not in his position. He got himself where he is; he doesn’t get to use that as an excuse.” Dean scoffed and took another drink. “And what happened to the ‘I know my place now’ crap? Clearly, he doesn’t.”

“What are you talking about?” Sam looked at him in bewilderment and disgust. “He said he understands our positions. He didn’t say, ‘I’m gonna do whatever you want now.’ He said the opposite of that. He said he’s going to do what we want until what we want becomes too big of a threat to him.” He continued to rant, visibly struggling to keep his voice down. “He’s doing a cost-benefit analysis every time he interacts with us to figure out which moves will cause him the least amount of suffering. So what does it say about us that he wouldn’t admit his history with Crowley? That he wouldn’t admit to being a kid who was tricked six thousand years ago and hasn’t been involved with the guy since?”

Dean arched his brow. “Tell me how you really feel.”

Scoffing, Sam rolled his eyes. “Sure, Dean. Just dismiss it.”

“Dude, I’m not about to feel sorry for a demon.” Dean opened his mouth to continue, but Sam cut him off with a very familiar, very cold gaze leveled at him. It was the one he always wore when he was pushed to his limit. Dean’s temper always ran hot; Sam’s did the same all the way up to the moment he hit unadulterated rage. Then it turned to ice.

“I guess I wasn’t thinking about your time in Hell.”

Dean froze.

“It must feel good to have someone terrified of you again.”

Dean processed. He saw red.

And after he launched himself across the table, he wasn’t really sure what happened.

“You’re back. Bobby and I were—what happened?” Xal jerked to a halt a few steps into the kitchen, trying to decide if he should back up or rush forward. “Did someone attack you? Did Crowley stick a tail on you? Did—”

“Oh, no.” Dean wiped blood from his mouth with a bitter snort, shouldering past his brother and going for the fridge. “That busted nose was all me.”

Sam sneered back, “Here’s hoping I didn’t shatter your eye socket.”

Dean grabbed a bag of peas from the freezer and pressed it to the eye in question with a derisive, “Cute, but you’re not nearly as strong as you think you are, Sammy.”

“Oh?” Sam continued holding a dirty shop rag to his face. “I just assumed, with the way you were whimpering and crying, that it must’ve hurt pretty bad.”

Bobby sighed from behind Xal. “What did you two idjits do?”

Xal took a half step back, pulse thundering in his ears.

“Go on, Sam.” Dean uttered a ‘tch’ noise. “Tell him why I gave you a bloody nose.”

“I’d love to, Dean.” Sam extended his rag-holding hand but immediately brought it back when his nose started gushing. “I said Dean must enjoy having someone terrified of him again. He hasn’t had that little bit of joy since he was torturing people in Hell.”

Bobby sighed. “What are you—?”

“You punched him over that?” Xal stared at Dean, confused and disturbed, and then he looked at Sam, barely able to find his voice. “And you hit him back?”

Everyone in the room looked confused, but their expressions didn’t capture even a fraction of the dumbfounded shock Xal was feeling.

“You’re brothers. You’re not supposed to hit each other.” Xal opened his mouth to continue, but he was speechless, and his heart was racing faster with every second.

“Brothers hit each other all the time, Hellcat. It’s practically a requirement.”

Xal felt like he was the only sane person in the room. “What are you—? What?” He shook his head. “You don’t hit the people you love. You learn that when you’re, like, three.”

Sam sniffed, probably to clear the blood away. “Nobody likes it, but it happens. People who love each other are gonna get into fights. We—”

“Are you stupid?” Xal all but shouted. “You don’t get to just decide you care more about getting your anger out and making yourself feel better than you do about the person you claim to love! You don’t do that! And if you do do that, you definitely don’t accept it as a normal part of a relationship! You—” He skidded to a halt, silenced by the blend of surprise and defensiveness on their faces. “I’m overstepping,” he muttered, pulling his hands in close. “I—sorry. It’s none of my—sorry.” He buffered for a moment, moving stiffly, and all he could manage to make his vessel do was turn and leave, grabbing Drysdusa off the floor as he made a beeline for the exit.

They’re like that with each other? His throat tightened, pulse skyrocketing as he ran through the barely illuminated scrapyard. I’m never safe. If they do that to each other—to family—over a disagreement or some hurt feelings, then it doesn’t matter what I do for them or how much I prove myself. I’ll always be in danger. Even if the damage isn’t permanent, even if they let me back in after the fact, they’re still going to hurt me to make themselves feel better. He tried to catch his breath, struggling not to clutch Drysdusa too tight, and he didn’t know what he wanted to do beyond getting away from the house. It's all chance. It’s all a matter of what kind of mood they’re in when I screw up. I can’t earn safety or protection because the second they don’t like what I do, regardless of how they treat me normally, they’ll punish me based on how they feel in the moment. Running faster, he navigated with his eyes but experienced a kind of blindness in his brain where he wasn’t really sure where he was or what was happening. He clung desperately to the sensation of soft fur and night air, fending off the needles and knife tips.

“Go ahead. Pick one.”

He thought he heard Drysdusa mewing, but that cool air was starting to feel hotter.

“How? You said it’s not random, so—”

“Do you really think I’m going to tell you?”

Xal glanced up at the sky, navy melting into to ash as a slick hand trailed across his neck. He wheezed, eyes burning, heart pounding.

“But I can’t pick if I don’t know what I’m trying to do.”

“Too bad, so sad. You have to.”

“Just tell me the rules! Please!”

“How do you know there are any?”

“Because… because you said there were!”

“Well, maybe I was lying then. Or maybe I’m lying now. Who knows?”

Xal clenched his jaw, and he wished more than anything he could just leave his vessel. He just didn’t want to be there, in that body, in that moment, with that brain. But the ward kept him bound, and even if it didn’t, he couldn’t leave Drysdusa. She wasn’t safe now, either.

It’s never been safe. It wasn’t that they tricked him before—it wasn’t that he got too close and let himself trust them—it was that even if they did like him, and did trust him, and did want him around, there would never be a guarantee of safety. It would always be tentative and fragile; conditional and based on rules he couldn’t possibly hope to understand or predict.

And I’m bound to them. I have to keep them alive. I have to be here. He wondered how much his lungs would be burning if he weren’t impervious to lacking oxygen. Maybe I don’t. Maybe I should leave. I could go to another country. Even if one of them dies, would the other really come overseas just to kill me because they can? He swallowed. But Castiel… I don’t know if I can hide from him forever. He could find me—he could fly whichever brother is still alive to where I am. He felt sick, but he knew it wasn’t stomach acid rising in his throat. What do I do? What am I supposed to do?

“Xochiquetzal. D—”

Xal whirled around and let go of Drysdusa with one hand, summoning his claws and tearing into the arm connected to the hand on his shoulder. “Get away from me!”

Castiel lifted his arm, watching the blood drip. “This is the second time today you’ve done this to me.” He dropped it to his side and looked at Xal. “I don’t know what’s happening. Dean summoned me and told me to find you and make sure everything is…” He trailed off, probably realizing everything was not okay.

“Stay away from me,” Xal hissed, taking a few steps of retreat himself. “Don’t touch me. Don’t come near me. Just don’t.” He felt little claws on his collarbone, a quiet mew reaching his ears, and he pushed through the panic enough to realize he was probably scaring or even hurting her. “I’m leaving.”

Castiel tilted his head. “Where are you going?”

I wish I knew. “Somewhere none of you will find me.”

“You… want to leave indefinitely?” Castiel seemed bothered and bewildered. “I do not understand. What happened?” He almost took a step, but Xal hissed, and he quickly put his foot back on the ground. “Everyone is upset, and I don’t know why.”

Xal swallowed, shaking his head. “Sam and Dean got into a fight. That’s why they’re all beat up.” He swallowed again, easing the trembling hold he had on Drysdusa. “I can’t stay here.”

Frowning, Castiel cocked his head just a bit.

“You don’t get it, do you?” Xal scoffed, rolling his stinging eyes. “Of course you don’t.” He met Castiel’s gaze with a blunt explanation. “It’s not safe.” He rubbed the soft ears that touched his chin as Drysdusa continued to claw her way up. “If they’re willing to attack each other, do you have any idea what they’ll do to me?”

Castiel didn’t respond at first, increasingly thoughtful, and his lips slowly parted. “I… don’t believe they would hurt you if you didn’t give them a reason.”

“And what’s a reason?” Xal couldn’t keep the terror out of his voice. “Huh? What’s a reason? Which actions are safe and which ones aren’t? Which ones will upset Dean but not Sam? What about the other way around? What about making you angry? What about Bobby? What if someone has a headache? What if someone’s in a bad mood, and something that wouldn’t normally set them off suddenly has the potential to do just that?”

“Xochiquetzal, I don’t think it’s as treacherous as—”

“Of course you don’t, asinego!” Xal screamed but dropped his volume immediately, growling out the continuation. “Because you’re an angel. You and your siblings, oh-so-powerful, telepathically connected to each other, fluttering in and out whenever and wherever you want.”

“That’s not enti—”

“You’ve never been alone, Castiel. You’ve never spent every second of every day completely outnumbered. You’ve never gone from one minute to the next, and then the next, and then the next knowing you are the only one who cares what happens to you. Staring down the barrel of eternity’s shotgun and knowing it’s all on you. No one’s going to help you, no one’s going to protect you, no one’s going to fight for you except you.” Xal placed his free hand over the one pressed to Drysdusa, bluish-gray staring into nothing but blue as he tried to fend off the temptation of bitterness. “Do you have any idea how exhausting that is? Knowing if you make the wrong call,” like offering a deal to a Winchester, “or trust the wrong person,” like a Winchester, “or do the wrong thing at the wrong time,” like whatever he did to get on the Winchester radar in the first place, “and it all blows up in your face, you will have no one to blame, no one to complain to, no one to help you put the pieces back together but yourself.”

Castiel stared, not saying anything, thousands of processes running through his eyes. Xal stared right back, chest heaving as he panted, face damp.

“That… sounds very unpleasant.”

“It is,” Xal rasped, still trying to figure out how to get away. They know my history with Mesopotamia. I can’t go there.

Castiel moved his lips slowly. “I would… like to have the opportunity to…” His eyes scanned back and forth, as if reading a script, and then made contact. “I don’t… understand humans. I don’t think like they do. But…” He buffered for a moment. “But I am willing to… I want to learn. I have been watching Sam and Dean and Bobby, trying to figure it out myself, but… if you are willing to teach me…” his averted his eyes, “…perhaps I can succeed where humanity has failed.”

Xal blinked. “…what?”

“I do not know how to be a friend to someone.” Castiel spoke in a clearer, more confident tone as he looked back at the demon. “But I would like to learn. You seem to want a friend. It would be most efficient to combine our goals into one.”

Xal blinked again. “…what?”

Castiel’s hands twitched at his sides, like he wanted to do something with them. “Would you be… willing to consider an… alliance of sorts?”

Third blink.

“I like your… essence.”

Fourth blink.

“I enjoy when we are in the same room.” Castiel wet his lips. “It is similar to the way I feel with our humans, but there is a… kinship with you I cannot have with them.”

Finally able to speak, Xal huffed out an incredulous laugh. “What, because I can insult you in dead languages?”

“Yes,” Castiel answered unironically. “We have seen things they cannot begin to imagine. They can’t retain the vast quantities of memories and knowledge we can. We are… more alike than I wanted us to be. And I suppose that is the kind of thing one should pay penance for.”

Xal squinted. Penance?

“You…” Castiel struggled, and for a moment, Xal was certain his cheeks were getting red. “You proved to be more competent than I was.”

What?

“You healed Dean, you made me see what Heaven was planning, you knew spells and rituals I had never even heard of…” He sighed, gaze wandering to the side. “I thought I knew everything because I was told so much. But you… were told nothing. You learned instead.”

Xal scoffed. “And look where that got me. Crawling on my hands and knees for six thousand years, trying to please everyone so I don’t spend my life in agony.”

“Exactly.” Castiel stepped forward, and he didn’t stop when Xal tensed. “You can teach me how to learn. You can teach me what humanity has taught you. And I will teach you how to stare down your enemies and ensure they are the ones begging for mercy, not you.”

Swallowing, Xal shook his head. “You…” He exhaled, realizing it was pointless to try and make Castiel understand that Xal would never be able to make anyone beg for anything. “The last thing I need is another deal.”

“I don’t want to make a deal. I want to make a friend.” Castiel somehow said that in the same monotone he delivered his recon updates in. “I think you would like that, too.”

Eyes widened, hands trembling against Drysdusa’s tiny body. Dry lips, tight throat, and an indecipherable whirlwind he frantically tried to pull just one coherent thought from.

Castiel said nothing, waiting patiently, but there was nervousness in his eyes. It didn’t show on his face, but Xal could see the faint note of uncertainty, like he was afraid Xal would say no. Like he genuinely wanted Xal to say yes.

“First rule of friendship,” Xal rasped, voice underscored by heavy breaths. “You never, ever hit each other. You don’t use any kind of physical violence, you don’t shove, you don’t slap, you don’t strangle, you don’t tackle them to the ground—you don’t try to hurt them, and the only exception to that rule is if you need to do it to save their life.”

Castiel nodded. “That is an easy first rule.”

Xal snorted bitterly. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?”

Frowning, Castiel took another step. “It is an easy first rule for me.” He tilted his head, looking a bit like a barn owl. “Is that why you didn’t punch Dean on March 6^th?”

“Dean’s not my friend. Dean’s just in a position to make my life miserable. It’s not worth it to fight someone who has authority over you.” Xal hunched his shoulders, rubbing his thumb against Drysdusa’s face which prompted her to chew on it.

“And…” Castiel wet his lips, glancing to the side and thinking for a few moments before making eye contact again, “…I have authority over you.”

Xal tensed.

“I will obey the first rule if you obey the second.”

Xal tensed more, if that was possible.

“The second rule of friendship is that we do not deceive each other.” Castiel stared blankly, which was an odd expression to have given the words he was saying and how sincerely they sounded coming out of his mouth.

Swallowing, Xal offered a faint nod. “No lying. That’s a good rule. I—”

“That is not what I said.” Castiel leaned forward slightly, pushing into Xal’s space. “I said we do not deceive each other. That extends beyond lying.”

“Castiel, you—” Xal exhaled hard, taking a step back and averting his eyes. “You don’t understand how terrifying that is. You don’t—”

“I understand how terrified I am that history will repeat itself.” Castiel’s lips twitched faintly, eyes flickering to the side as he shifted on his feet, trying to maintain that blank expression and failing. “I trusted my brothers and sisters not to deceive me for millennia. And I was wrong. I have seen Sam and Dean deceive each other—the demon blood, the memories of Hell—and I see them conceal things from Bobby even now.”

Xal stopped, not knowing how to respond but painfully aware that Castiel wasn’t nearly as unaffected by their circumstances as Xal had thought.

“I am promising to refrain from physical violence, which is something you need and have realized no one else will give you.” Castiel opened his mouth, stopped, and then started again, embarrassment dusting color across his cheeks. “I am asking you to do the same for me.”

It took several moments of staring and thinking for Xal’s mouth to move again, but he wet his lips and offered a quiet, “Okay.”

Castiel’s lips twitched up in the corner, and he gave a serious nod.

Xal mimicked the expression and movement to return the sentiment.

“You also must let me pet Drysdusa whenever I want to.”

Laughing quietly, Xal shifted his hands to support her from beneath and held her out, keeping her close but putting her where Castiel could reach, which he did.

“Excellent.”

Xal watched fingers that had crushed the life out of many a monster gently dance between her ears, and for a moment, he thought maybe, if he was careful, those fingers would scratch his head, too.

“Very enjoyable, per the usual.”

Xal laughed. Soft, broken, choked out by the residual panic still coursing through his veins. But he did laugh.

Chapter Text

Sam rubbed his forehead, shuffling into the kitchen and trying to decide if he wanted a few swigs of the not-so-legal alcohol in Bobby’s secret cabinet or if he wanted to try and tough out the pain throbbing across his face.

“I found another one.”

“Why is she moving so quickly?”

Sam glanced toward the table, still half asleep but able to process Castiel and Xal sitting across from each other with papers spread between them. Drysdusa wibbled and wobbled around the table, pouncing on the moving corners and sheets, but they just picked her up and plopped her down somewhere else when necessary, not at all distracted.

“Sam is not drinking demon blood, and we know of Heaven and Hell’s ultimate goal.” Castiel continued, pulling a leatherbound journal closer to himself. “Between those two things, she shouldn’t have any kind of urgency to her movements, because she can break the necessary seals, but without Sam’s cooperation, she cannot achieve the ultimate goal.”

Xal turned toward a laptop—Sam’s laptop, he was realizing as his brain started to clear—and typed something, fingers flying at a speed Sam hadn’t seen before.

“Learned a lot of dances, how to bake, how to touchtype on a typewriter… it was a busy decade.”

“If she figured out some other way to complete the ritual, we’re screwed,” Xal muttered, alternating between clicks and typing. “If there were another way to get Lucifer out of the cage, what would it be? What does Sam killing Lilith with demonic powers do that something else could replicate?”

Castiel frowned, sapphire skimming the words on the page laid before him. “Perhaps is some sort of… meeting of light and dark.”

“Explain.” Xal didn’t look away from the screen.

“The first seal was a Righteous Man shedding blood in Hell. Something very good and light doing something very evil and dark. Then the last seal is supposed to be an abomination with inbred darkness annihilating a very powerful and evil creature to bring light.”

Sam didn’t really hear what was said after that, too focused on keeping his flinch internal, and by the time he recovered, Castiel was done speaking. Deciding he definitely did need the not-so-legal liquor, he went over and opened the cabinet by the fridge, reaching in and sliding the false back to the side with a solid thud.

“Baiseur de chèvre!” Xal shouted, half jumping and half falling from his chair.

Sam startled in response, smacking his hand against the inside of the compartment and letting out a curse of his own. Or at least, he assumed what Xal said was a curse. That was the vibe he got.

“Did you not know he was there?” Castiel asked, tilting his head slightly.  

Oh, so Castiel did know I was here. Hissing, Sam put his burning hand against his stomach and held his breath. Good to know. Though, maybe it was. It meant Castiel didn’t bother pretending he didn’t know exactly what Sam was. He would say it right to Sam’s face. Because it was the truth. Because Sam was, always had been, and always would be an abomination.

“Ah, sorry about that.” Xal cleared his throat and eased back onto his chair. “Good morning, Sam.” He pointed to the laptop and forced a split-second smile, but then he didn’t speak, seeming unsure of what to do with himself.

Right. He stormed out last night. Sam returned the smile, albeit weakly, and grabbed the liquor bottle with his throbbing hand. “Good morning.” He pulled the stopper from the bottle, threw back a mouthful, and returned the moonshineish substance to its compartment as it burned through his esophagus. “You said she’s—” He coughed, cleared his throat, swallowed the leftover acid, and tried again. “You said she’s picking up speed? Wait.” He stopped, brain waking up a little more. “She’s breaking seals? I thought she was making demons.”

“She was.” Castiel caught Drysdusa as she toddled off the edge, planting her back in the center. “However, as we investigated her activity across the top of the United States, along the Maple Syrup border and toward the northea—"

“The what border?” Sam knew he hadn’t had that much of Bobby’s Brew.

“The…” Castiel looked between the two, uncertain. “The Maple Syrup border. Between here and Sorry City? To the north?”

Sam snorted, unable to keep a smile from his face, but Xal seemed… not upset, not nearly as amused. He was smiling, but it was faint and tinged with something resembling sadness.

“Dean was just joking, Castiel. Canada is the country to the north of us, and they’re known for things like saying ‘sorry’ and ‘eh’ a lot, geese and moose, and maple leaves and syrup.” Xal smiled a little more. “They’re just stereotypes, but it would be pretty funny if we called it the Maple Syrup border.”

Castiel nodded slowly, his gaze drifting downward for a second.

Trying to find some middle ground between acknowledging neither of them found the joke funny and Sam’s own understanding that Dean hadn’t had malicious intentions, he walked to the fridge and offered a friendly, “Maple Syrup Pass would be better. Or… the Maple Syrup…” He struggled for a moment.

“Demarcation?” Castiel offered.

Sam smiled. “Sure, that works. The Maple Syrup Demarcation Line.”

Castiel gave a slow nod, thought for a second, and then returned to his exposition. “We followed her activity along the… top of this country from left to right, and we found the activity changed once she reached Wisconsin.”

Xal turned the laptop toward Sam, clicking the taskbar to pull up a Word document. “Up until that point, we see a predictable trail of cattle mutilations, electrical storms, and all the usual signs of basic demon activity. She hits Wisconsin, and it turns into a string of electrical storms and suicides instead.” He indicated the list of names, dates, and methods. “Then she gets to the border between Wisconsin and Michigan, and it turns to electrical outages and a series of fires.”

“Twenty-seven individuals taking their own lives between the hours of midnight and four in the morning, all inside a fifty-mile radius, is one of the possible seals to break in the pursuit of opening the Cage.” Castiel started where Xal stopped, the transition seamless, and stared at Sam in that unnerving, unwavering way he often did. “We believe the fires could have been part of a summoning ritual, but we’re trying to figure out what exactly she was trying to summon.”

Sam opened his mouth to ask a question, but Xal picked up the conversation, words falling in the same cadence as Castiel’s.

“We went through the possible uses for fire when breaking seals, but there’s nothing. If it were a massive fire or a series of fires that desecrate a specific place, like a sacred burial ground, we might have something, but it’s not.”

Sam waited a beat to make sure there was nothing else to say. “So, we think she might have found another way to break the final seal without me.” He inhaled slowly. “That’s… I mean, wasn’t she already close to 65 seals when you found out Heaven’s plan?”

“Yes,” Castiel confirmed. “Meaning if she has found another way, time is of the essence.”

Wetting his lips, Sam felt the tender bruising. “We need to get to Wisconsin, then, and figure out what those fires were.”

“Ideally,” was Castiel’s flat response.

“Okay.” Sam reached up, wanting to rub his nose but knowing it would only make the pain worse, and he thought to himself that he probably should have had a little more of whatever was in Bobby’s cabinet. “I’ll go wake up Dean and get him functioning, and then we’ll get packed and hit the road.” He smiled weakly at Xal, not really knowing where everyone stood after the dramatic fallout the night before. “You, uh… Do you feel up to coming with us? Or do you want to stay with Bobby a little while longer?” He specifically asked if Xal wanted to stay—not needed to stay—trying to relay a sense of concern without making the blatant statements that seemed to upset Xal more.

“I’ll take my place in the backseat. I’ve been getting bored, and…” Xal trailed for a second, and Sam could almost hear the ‘and I can’t avoid you forever’ in the silence. “It would be good to hunt again. Or at least have a job to do.”

Sam gave another smile and a nod. “Sounds good.” There were three beats of silence. “Are you…” He stood with his mouth open for a few seconds.

Are you going to be okay in the same room as Dean?

Are you feeling different now that you’re calm, or do you really believe what you said?

Are you going to talk to any of us about what’s going on in your head any time soon?

“…going to bring my laptop?” Sam gestured vaguely. “If not, just leave it there, and I can get it later. As long as it winds up in the Impala before we leave.”

Xal smiled tightly. “I can take care of it.”

Sam gave an awkward thumbs up and retreated into the hall. I hate everything.

If we keep picking up strays, I’m gonna need a minivan. Dean crinkled his brow. Need one, maybe, but I’d never get one. If it comes down to it, we can throw someone in the trunk. Shaking his head slightly, he glanced out the window to his left before putting his eyes back on the road.

“Driving is so slow.” Castiel spoke flatly, nothing clear from his tone, but then he let out a heavy sigh that said he was extremely bored.

Xal snorted, sitting sideways on the back seat and leaning back against the door behind Sam’s seat. “You’re such a baby. Try going from one end of a continent to the other on foot.”

Castiel didn’t speak right away. “Which continent?” he asked, as if it were relevant.

“Africa. Why?”

“At the top or the bottom?”

Sam looked away from the window and made eye contact with Dean, trying not to smile, and Dean got the idea Sam had somehow developed telepathy and knew Dean had just been comparing their situation to a minivan, which implied children arguing in the backseat.

“It was kind of toward the middle.”

“It wasn’t that far across, then. You went horizontally, I presume.”

“Yes? Wait, what?” Xal pushed himself up slightly, one earbud dangling from his crew cut sweatshirt. “Dude, you can’t even make it to Wisconsin, and you’re—”

“If I were traversing a continent on foot, I would be moving instead of sitting still. It’s different.”

Dean wished he could close his eyes and drop his forehead to the wheel, but that probably wouldn’t go well on a highway, however sparse the traffic might have been. He glanced at Sam, who was grinning to himself, and then he rolled his eyes before putting them back on the road.

“You’re right, it would be different. It would be worse, because you would be exhausted.”

“I am an angel. We do not get exhausted.” Pause. “You are also supposed to be impervious to fatigue. You possess a vessel the way we do, correct?”

Xal hesitated, but Dean couldn’t tell if it was nervousness or lacking words. “It… really depends how connected you are to your vessel. Most demons body-hop so much they don’t really have a chance to…” he struggled, “…soak into them?”

Dean’s brow shot up. “Soak into them?”

Xal shifted in his seat, boots moving against the seat in a way that had Dean glaring. “Think of a vessel as a really dense sponge and a soul as a liquid. If you put them together, the sponge starts to soak up the liquid, and the longer you leave it there, the more liquid it soaks up until it hits capacity. So, if you jump in a body, stay for a month or two, and then jump back out, you’re not going to have enough time to get connected to your vessel. You’re pulling the strings like a puppet master; you’re not wearing the puppet as a costume that moves in sync with you.”

Dean pursed his lips. “Does the binding seal impact that? Make the connection stronger or…?”

“Yes, but not…” Xal waffled for a moment. “It doesn’t take away the process of absorption; it just makes the sponge absorb faster.”

Sam turned to look over his shoulder. “You came out when the Hell Gate opened, right? So, you and your vessel are probably pretty connected by now.”

“Yeah, Adam and I are pretty…” lifting a hand, Xal flexed his fingers a few times, “…emulsified.”

Dean snorted at the word choice but made no comment, settling for another eyeroll.

“Speaking of the binding seal…” Xal shifted on the backseat, drawing his legs in closer and pushing himself against the door. “Um, the… the sigil you broke so I could survive the other night… are you ever gonna put that back on?”

Dean bit down on the inside of his cheek to hold back a smart comment, letting Sam take the question.

“No, we’re not. We, ah, we talked about it, and we decided to leave it broken.” Sam tread carefully, and Dean knew his brother was doing some kind of mental gymnastics to walk the line between cold truth and unrealistic pleasantries. “You have other sigils on you. You can’t leave your vessel, you can’t use any kinetic powers, your superhuman strength is basically cut in half… and you’ve given us no reason not to trust you with the durability demons naturally have. You said if a demon gets killed, they’re stuck in Hell forever, and… we definitely don’t want that to happen to you. Anything we can do to keep you alive…”

Xal nodded jerkily. “Got it.” Beat. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. We should have removed it before you got hurt in the first place.”

Xal just hummed again, and silence settled over the vehicle. It wasn’t too bad at first, but after a handful of minutes, Dean found himself wishing the metaphorical kids in the back would start bickering again.

Castiel didn’t start bickering, but he did sigh and offer an alternative. “How much longer will we need to drive to get to Wisconsin?”

And Dean couldn’t help but smirk at that.

"Oh, so there is something else."

“Dean.”

Xal wet his lips, looking from the bruised cheek and browbone combo to the equally bruised mouth and nose combo. "It makes sense that he’s mad. It’s pretty important.” He took a subtle breath and looked back at Dean. “I didn't think about it at first because, well, on my timeline, it’s relatively new. You asked what you should know about me and Crowley, and this isn't something about us, but it's something about him only I could tell you."

Dean arched a brow, leaning back against the motel wall with his arms crossed over his chest.

"If you ask anyone—anyone other than the ancients like Lilith—they will tell you Crowley was a man named Roderick MacLeod before he sold his soul. His own mother—MacLeod's mother, that is, Rowena—thinks Crowley is her son."

Sam frowned. "You're saying she's wrong?"

"Crowley existed long before MacLeod. I was there, obviously. But Crowley is a businessman, and he's competitive, and he is very, very clever." Xal interlaced his fingers, extending his hands slightly as he explained. "He started killing off everyone who was aware of him before the 1600s, and who was also in his way. He then went to Scotland in 1661 and possessed a baby that had been born less than twenty-four hours earlier.”

"Lovely." Dean snorted in disgust.

"He lived an entire life as a 'human,'" Xal used air quotes, "and as far as all the low-level demons, his mother, his son, anyone MacLeod ever knew, anyone of equal rank—they all think—"

"That burning MacLeod's bones will kill him," Sam sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"But it won't," Xal continued, apologetic for the bad news he had to deliver. "But it keeps people busy—leads them on a wild goose chase—and the whole time they're trying to track down his bones, they're increasing the chance he's going to hear about what they're up to. Ideally, he'll know they're trying to off him before they even find the bones, but if he can't stop them in time, it still won't matter because burning the bones won't actually kill him. But, if necessary, it will enable him to fake his death and lay low until he can get the upper hand again."

Dean crinkled his nose. "Why'd he leave you alive?"

Xal flashed a bitter smile. "You don't get rid of trophies."

There was a brief silence.

"He may want us to know," Castiel mused. "Perhaps he thinks assuring us of his invincibility, for lack of a better word, will keep us from even attempting to betray him."

Dean snorted. "Well, he's wrong."

"That's a post-Lilith problem," Sam said, holding his hands out to stop the conversation before it could get anywhere. "Right now, we need to use him. We can stab him in the back later."

"As long as you get to the backstabbing before he does," Xal muttered, gripping his upper arms.

Castiel frowned. "Do we truly need to use him? He already gave us the Colt.”

Everyone stopped, various thought progressions showing on every face.

"Yeah, actually, I guess…" Sam pursed his lips, surprised. "I guess we do have the Colt. We could use him for information, but we don't really need—"

"You did confirm it has bullets, right?" Xal himself had been having a bit of an existential crisis at the time, so he had no idea what they did or didn’t do once they got their hands on the weapon.

"Of course, we, uh," Dean cleared his throat and scratched his eye, "we checked."

Xal reached up to rub his face. "That's his leverage. He's got the bullets." He dropped his hands and sighed. "Okay, so—"

"Say we're stupid."

Xal’s gaze snapped to Dean. What?

"We were stupid. So say it."

Breathing carefully, Xal approached the test. "I mean, everyone is stupid from time to time." He doesn't want nervous, submissive me. "They do things like make deals that bind them to people who are notoriously unstable and violent. We've all been there." He let a beat of silence hit and then quickly moved on. "So, we have to hunt her down and come up with a plan to get her cornered, and then he'll give us his half of the weapon."

Castiel frowned. "Why wouldn't he hold the entire weapon hostage?"

"He's making the deal more appealing." Sam answered without hesitation. "If he had the whole weapon, we would have no reason to believe he's remotely on our side or that, if he is, he's not doing it all on his own, in his own way, and just using us to distract her while he makes his move."

Dean sighed. "We also would have tried to kill or capture him if he didn't offer us something we wanted, or if he said he had it but refused to give it to us.”

"Regardless," Castiel interjected, "he has the bullets. Cooperation of some kind is necessary."

"What does that cooperation entail?" Sam asked, and Xal could tell the idea of working with a demon and the forces of Hell was bringing back bad memories.

"We should focus on figuring out Lilith's plan, first." Xal hooked his thumbs in his pockets, giving the motel carpet a thoughtful stare. "If she’s back to breaking seals, we need to know why, and I don’t know if we can get that from Crowley, or if he can at least point us in the right direction but…” He trailed off into a sigh.

"Xochiquetzal is correct. Figuring out Lilith’s long-term plan is top priority.” Castiel looked out the motel window despite the closed blinds. "We will look in the area for anything of supernatural persuasion. You two should do more research here while—"

"You should sleep. We just spent ten hours on the road." Xal tensed immediately. "I just, uh—" he caught a glimpse of Sam's eye, seeing no danger, "—I just meant… you'll function better." He shrugged, glimpsing Dean but unsure what was there. "Not telling you what to do, obviously. Just saying." They don’t like the submissive; you have to stop doing the submissive.

Sam gave a quick smile. "You’re probably right. We could use a power nap." He looked between the two supernatural beings, eyebrows lifting. "Do either of you need some rest?"

Define need. "I'm fine. Castiel?"

Castiel blinked. "My body does not require rest."

"Wrong." Xal narrowed his eyes. "Your body doesn't require sleep. Everything that has sentience—even multi-dimensional wavelengths of celestial sentience—needs to rest at times."

Castiel frowned. “They are different?”

“Very.” Xal started walking toward the door. “Come on.” He let out a sigh, finding himself oddly happy with how easy it was to slip into casual conversation with the angel. “I’ll explain it to you while we look around for ‘anything of supernatural persuasion.’” He went down the hall, reaching up to scratch at his neck. Don’t get comfortable. You made that mistake once, and it nearly killed you. Don’t make it again.

“They’re Pop Rocks. Trust me, they’re a great place to start.”

Castiel tilted his head to the side and leaned in slightly, looking at the packet in Xochiquetzal’s hand. “And… this will help me experience humanity?”

Xochiquetzal wet his lips, and he still seemed very hesitant to engage any time Castiel approached him. Castiel knew there had to be an element of fear, but while he used to think it was due to the ability with which he could smite the demon, he was now convinced it was something far more… confusing? Impractical? Vulnerable? Nuanced?

Human. Human was a term that covered all of those things.

“It’s… listen, a lot of the human experience is about… well, experiences. Things you see, and taste, and smell, and touch. Unforgettable people, places, and things. It’s—”

“Nouns.”

Xochiquetzal blinked, bluish gray staring up into pure blue. “What?”

“You should have said unforgettable nouns. It would have been more concise.”

Xochiquetzal stared for a moment, lips twitching in the corner, and then he lifted the packet in his hand. “This is a candy humans like, and it’s distinct because it has flavor and creates a sensation in your mouth.” He tore the top of the packet. “You’re not used to manipulating your connection with Jimmy enough to taste things.”

“I can taste extremely well,” Castiel objected. “I taste every molecule.”

“Yeah, that’s not what you want.” Xochiquetzal smiled faintly. “Spent some time in France back in the late thirties, and I learned a lot from a very infamous chef.”

Castiel frowned, tilting his head. “If the food was enjoyable, wouldn’t it be famous, not infamous?”

Xochiquetzal only smirked. “Her food was incredible. It was a whole collection of unrelated things that added the ‘in’ to ‘famous.’” He extended his hand a little farther. “Start with Pop Rocks and carbonated drinks. It’ll be hard at first, but you’ll develop the ability to feel it on your tongue and in your throat. Spicy foods come after that—spicy as in something that burns, not something that is heavily spiced. Because you’re used to feeling bubbles and tingling on the surface of the skin, you’ll be able to better feel the burning sensation.”

Somewhat hesitant, Castiel extended his hand and grabbed the small, mostly black packet, giving it a final onceover before dumping it into his mouth.

“Don’t swallow right away.”

Castiel obeyed, squinting as he tried to feel the sensation on his tongue. It took a moment to get past the distraction of each individual molecule, but even though he couldn’t get a flavor out of it, he was able to feel some kind of… bubbling or foaming or… well, popping, and he figured that was where the name came from.

“It’s different, isn’t it? You have to focus, but you can get there.”

Castiel nodded, running his tongue over the inside of his mouth.

“I figure it’s harder for an angel than a demon because we were once human ourselves. We’re at least somewhat familiar with tastes and smells and…” Xochiquetzal bit his lip, looking like he was fighting back a smile.

Finally ceasing his thorough exploration of his own mouth, Castiel frowned. “What?”

Xochiquetzal immediately shook his head, smile vanishing. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

Castiel was confused, but he decided he was more interested in—

“I—I’m sorry.”

Castiel blinked.

“You asked me not to lie to you, and I…” Xochiquetzal rubbed his neck with a heavy sigh. “I’m new at this. I’m sorry.” He took a breath. “I was trying not to smile because it just kind of looked funny the way you kept twisting your mouth around.”

Grinding to a halt, Castiel looked at Xochiquetzal and tried to summon words, but his brain was far too busy with the facts of the situation to do that. He didn’t have any reason to correct himself. It wasn’t something serious—it certainly wasn’t the kind of thing I had in mind when I was talking about Sam and Dean and Heaven all lying to me—and I wasn’t going to question him further on it. He could have gotten away with it; there would have been no consequence for doing so.

“Castiel?”

“I appreciate your forthcomingness.”

“That’s… a word.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Well, you’re welcome. For the, um, forthco—”

They both startled, a gunshot ringing across the gas station parking lot. Castiel tried to narrow down the location—he pointed to the motel across the street, because that much was easy to hear—and when a second shot rang out, he pinpointed it.

“It’s Sam and Dean,” was the simple explanation he offered before flying to the motel room. He caught a glimpse of two figures retreating through the open doorway, but he was more concerned with the blood-splattered bodies on the beds. “Dean.” Castiel moved toward the bed on the left, but he stopped short, immediately able to feel the lack of life force in the room. They’re dead.

Castiel’s gut reaction was to think of a way to reverse the damage, but it took no more than a second for him to realize the opportunity they had been given. Both Sam and Dean had Heavenbound souls. They were dead, and while it was imperative to remedy that in the long-term, in the short-term…

“Oh, God!”

Castiel looked toward the door, where Xochiquetzal stood with wide eyes and a smudge of red on his cheek. “My thoughts exactly. If they’re in Heaven, they may be able to find Joshua, and he may be able to tell us what Heaven been keeping from the rest of the Host for an unknown length of time: where is God in all of this?”

Xochiquetzal blinked. “What?” He shook his head. “No, I was—so you can bring them back? They’ll be okay?”

Castiel nodded his head. “Yes, but first, we need to take advantage of this situation. I need to find a way to contact them.”

“And no one’s going to do anything to—to me, right?” Xochiquetzal was slightly out of breath and wringing his hands.

Castiel stared with a frown, hoping that would be enough to prompt explanation.

“I—I stay out of Hell as long as the brothers are alive. But they’re dead right now, and even if they’re coming back, the deal might—” Xochiquetzal stopped, swallowed, and glanced away, muttering to himself as his hands continued to twist and turn. “Well, no, I guess the terms said, ‘we won’t send you back to Hell as long as we’re both alive.’ Meaning it only refers to them, anyway, and if they’re both dead, then they’re obviously not here to—”

“I would not let them send you back to Hell regardless.”

Xochiquetzal’s head snapped back up, eyes wide.

“You need to take more advantage of your deal, Xochiquetzal.” Castiel gestured toward himself. “For example, you could kill me, but as long as both brothers are alive, they still cannot send you back to Hell. You can do quite a lot, and just because they are angry at you, as long as they are both alive, they cannot be the ones to exorcise or kill you.”

Xochiquetzal opened his mouth but stopped short of speaking and jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “I knocked out the two guys that came from this room, so you get in touch with Sam and Dean, and I’ll just… see if I can get any information out of the suspects. They feel like hunters, but I’ll find out if they did this on their own, or if there’s a larger group after the Winchesters, or if Crowley hired them, or…” he shook his head a few times, “…or any of the other ten million motives they could have.”

Castiel nodded once, finding the plan sensible, and then he turned back toward the bodies. Now… to communicate with them while they’re on the other side of a barrier meant to keep traitors like myself from returning home…

“Uh… did you go to Woodstock ’89 and not tell me?” Dean glanced around the dark field and wide open, equally dark skies, but he kept coming back to a bonfire surrounded by dancing, spinning bodies.

“Yeah, Dean. I went to a Woodstock recreation when I was six.” Sam didn’t have the same light tone to his teasing that he usually did. He was somber—he had been since they ran from the light on the road Sam had taken to Stanford—and started down the hillside with a quiet, “This isn’t my memory.”

Dean followed him onto the steep embankment, trying to feel his way over the rocks and dips in the dark. “If it’s not yours or mine, does that mean we’re off the path?” He looked over his shoulder, but all he saw was a void. “Should we backtrack?”

Sam hummed, not looking away from the bright backdrop to the melodic, shadowy, fragrant tangle of bodies. “We have to be here for a reason.”

“Maybe it’s someone else’s favorite abandoning-my-family-without-so-much-as-a-goodbye memory.” Dean winced the second the last word left his tongue. I shouldn’t have said that. But if he took it back, Sam might try to talk, and that would be so awkward, and it wasn’t the time or place, and Dean was too angry to stuff it down like he normally did, and…

Thankfully, Sam said nothing.

They made their way through the tall grass, long blades fading into sticks and dirt under their boots. The sky was an off shade of blue, smoke from the blazing inferno giving it a grayish tone as it spread, but between the drums and symbols and whatever stringed instrument was currently carrying the melody, none of the dancers seemed to care about the view. Dean didn’t care about the view, either; he cared about the combined heat of the bonfire and whatever season it was bringing back very unpleasant memories.

“Is that…?”

Dean looked away from the drummers wrapped in red and gray, following Sam’s extended finger to a familiar face. Sitting in the grass near the least populated side of the clearing, chin on his knees and arms wrapped around his legs, he stared into the flames.

“So, this is Xal’s memory?” Sam looked around at the woven clothes and bare feet. “But this has to be an old memory, so he wouldn’t have looked like this. He wouldn’t have had the vessel we know.”

Dean shrugged, weaving between elated partiers. “I also wasn’t twenty-nine in that memory with Mom. What I want to know is how he managed to get into Heaven when we were the only two in that motel room getting killed.”

Sam followed Dean through the crowd without a comment, nearly getting smacked by an arm as a dancing girl twirled by, a move which quickly came to a stop as she started speaking to a nearby woman, holding out a satchel.

“Girin, you’ve been wanting one of these ever since you had your fourth. Šassūrātu’s Blessings! Just put it by your head at night or carry it around and throughout the day breathe it in.”

Dean stopped, turning toward the girl with a frown.

“…she was dancing and offering people the blessings and charms she normally bartered with.”

“Oh, Drishya! Gratitude!” Dissolving into a sigh, the woman in gray bent down to grab the toddler pulling on her dress. “I can make for you some extra—”

“Have no worries!” Drishya barely stopped dancing long enough to say that much, already twirling away as she pulled something else from a satchel at her waist.

Dean squinted and trailed after her with a, “Hey, follow me,” tossed over his shoulder. He watched her pass along a cord woven with some kind of metal, and he was curious both about what it did and the interaction he knew had to be coming, but more than that, he was confused by the conversations. “Why are they talking weird?”

Sam spoke lowly, and Dean knew it wasn’t to avoid detection, so he could only assume it was another sign Sam wasn’t in a good place. “It’s probably a language thing. Like, you know, how gesundheit is German for ‘health,’ but it’s used like we would use ‘God bless you?’”

“Gesundheit means health?” Dean opened his mouth to question further, but Drishya screeched to a halt in front of Xal before he could. He said she knew right away he wasn’t human, and she looks like someone who just realized there’s a monster around.

Drishya turned toward Xal, arms that had been thrown wide slowly dropping. “You’re new.”

Xal’s gaze shifted from the fire to her face, but he didn’t offer a response beyond a nearly inaudible hum.

“You’ve traveled a long way to get here.” She took a step toward him and crouched down, peering around his head and tilting her own. “Very, very far; the kind of distance you can’t cross with feet.”

Swallowing, Xal slid one hand from his legs to the dirt, pushing like he was ready to jump to his feet and bolt into the night. “I just want to sit at the fire.”

“I like your eyes.” She leaned in a little closer but didn’t hit her knees, keeping her feet beneath her. “And you have a nice smile.”

“I’m not smiling,” Xal replied vacantly. “And you can’t see.”

Snorting, she tossed a long strand of dark hair over her shoulder. “Of course I can. I just don’t have eyes that work. Those are two entirely different things.”

Xal looked over his shoulder, pushing against the ground again as he considered retreat.

“I can see very well.” Drishya extended her hand, fingers brushing against Xal’s throat and traveling upward. “You’re dark… and damaged… but you’re still good.”

“I promise you, I’m not.” Xal responded without a second of hesitation, frozen in place with muscles so tight they trembled.

But Drishya only sighed, annoyed and dismissive. “As I said, eyes that work and possession of sight are two very different things.”

“I just want to sit and—”

She snatched his wrists and bounced backward onto her feet, pulling him with her as he yelped. “It’s an unhappy circumstance to repeatedly go back to my cart for refilling my satchel. You can help me carry and bestow my gifts.”

“I don’t know anyone—”

“Interaction is required to change that.”

“—and I’m not staying in Uruk.”

“I believe interaction will change that, as well.” She kept a firm grasp on his wrist, the other hand slipping back into her satchel. “Come! I’ll ensure you make your place quickly.”

“I—Hey!”

“Musarra!” Drishya lifted a hand over her head, woven leather on her wrist, and she trotted toward a tall broad-shouldered man with enough strength to, apparently, drag a demon along. “This is my new friend, Xal!”

Xal dug his feet in. “That’s not my name.”

“No,” she said, turning her head to stare at him, or through him, or maybe into him, “but you won’t go by Xael like you used to, and changing your name to something as drastic as Xochiquetzal is a bit much. Nicknames help form bonds. Trust me.”

Xal didn’t respond, but he wasn’t digging his feet in anymore.

“Deep down, you’re still Xael. It’s important to remember that.” She let out an airy laugh and started running. “Come! You’ll like Musarra. He’s a wonderful dancer, and he makes the softest clothes in the city!”

And Xal let her pull him along, doing his best to engage in conversation with the man in blue. He kept looking at her, unsettled and confused, but he forced a smile, and by the time she was dragging him to another townsperson, he was returning the hold she had on his wrist.

“We were friends after that.”

“What were you going to say?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Dean squinted. “He was thinking about how she said he was good.”

“What?” Sam asked.

But Dean just shook his head. “Nothing. Let’s keep following the road.” He brushed past, giving the bonfire a wide berth as he looked around the dark field, eventually spotting a beaten path that cut through the grass.

Sam didn’t say anything, but Dean could see him repeatedly looking over his shoulder, staring at the demon and psychic duo still making their way around the gathering.

“I was fresh out of Hell for the first time. I was in a body that wasn’t mine for the first time—no, they weren’t braindead like this one, and I’m sorry for that—and I was just… trying to figure out what to do.”

Dean frowned, thinking of the way Xal had stared into the flames. Dean himself had an aversion to fire and heat… dogs… the clinking of chains, and the dark, and… for quite a while after he got out. But Xal was just staring into it. Not with longing, like he wanted to go back, but not with fear. Just resignation and defeat. Something else, too, but Dean wasn’t sure what it was, and for once, he was going to withhold his judgement.

Maybe I shouldn’t judge anything. He reached up to touch the amulet on his chest. Or maybe I should. Maybe I judged wrong before, and Sam isn’t who I thought he was, and I need to make new judgement. Maybe…

“Well, you don’t remember, do you? You ran away on my watch. I looked everywhere for you. I thought you were dead. And when Dad came home… Hey, look up there.”

Sam inhaled sharply, bringing himself back to reality. Or rather, back to whatever version of someone’s reality they were now in. “Hmm?”

Dean pointed to a large building up ahead, torches by the door and light pouring through the windows and onto the dirt road.

“Well, I’m no historian,” Sam started, squinting in the dim light of dusk, “but I’m gonna say we’re significantly closer to our time.” Or at least, that was the impression he got from the stonework and wooden beams of the structure they were approaching.

“It’s loud,” Dean commented, a raucous sound pouring through the open doorway along with a potent smell. “Whew. I don’t know what kinda booze that is, but I really want to find out what it can do to you.”

“Sammy!”

Sam stopped with one foot over the threshold, startled by his nickname being shouted because the voice did not belong to Dean. And if there had been any doubt, it was erased when he made eye contact with his brother and found equal amounts of confusion.

“Sammy, get over here!” Large hands were cupped around a mouth decorated with a thick, blonde beard, the man standing on the bar of the tavern as he hollered at the top of his lungs. “C’mon, boy!”

Sam looked around, and he assumed Dean did the same, but Sam was the one to find a sheepish Xal covering his face as he trudged up to the bar.

“Sichfrith…” Xal moaned. “You know the center of attention is not where I like to dwell.”

“C’mooo—”

Xal grabbed the outstretched hand and pulled himself onto the bar, and given how inebriated the man pulling him was, he had probably used his supernatural strength to simply jump up. His boots hit the wood, and he turned to face the tavern with a smile and a reluctant sigh, arms spread wide.

“Lads and gents, we’ve got a hero standing amongst us this eve!”

Xal laughed, grabbing the man with the long ponytail and nearly empty mug as he canted forward, keeping him from toppling to the floor. “You’re drunker than a mother of twenty with her husband away!”

“Our boy,” the man—presumably Sichfrith—slung his arm around Xal’s shoulders, “our Samhradhán, was an absolute nightmare.”

Sam glanced at Dean instinctively, afraid whatever they were about to learn would have dire consequences once they were back on the terrestrial side of the veil.

“The Lancastrians are gonna see those cold, blue eyes in their worst dreams ‘til the day they finally kick it!” Sichfrith lifted his mug to accentuate the end of his sentence, but he immediately stumbled back and pulled it down to drink some more.

“You mean the pittance of Lancastrians Sammy left alive?” a black-haired man from the corner on their left shouted out.

Erupting into laughter, the room gained almost a kind of pulse, the very air throbbing in a tangible rhythm. Xal himself laughed again, lifting a hand to point at his chin. “Does that mean I’m pardoned of the dishonor of keeping my beard short?”

“No!” the crowd immediately shot back.

“Sammy, Sammy, Sammy,” Sichfrith slurred rapidly. “Tell us the special hint to staying alive even after—” he hiccupped, “—being hacked half-to-total.”

Xal snorted. “Special hint? That like a secret, ya lovely moron?”

Dean leaned toward Sam. “This language barrier is killing me. Everyone sounds so weird. Half-to-total. Freaking lovely moron.”

Sam couldn’t help but smile a little, especially considering Dean didn’t sound angry, and that came with a sense of relief for Sam. No point in him hating both me and Xal.

“Well, lads and gents, I’ll tell ya the special hint.” Xal looked around the room, expression falling as he grew melancholic and nervously wet his lips. “Truth is, ah, I’m a spirit.”

Sam’s eyes widened.

“A dark, twisted spirit from an Otherworld so… unfathomably abysmal you’ve never even heard the name.” Xal looked around, lifting his hands with his palms to the ceiling. “I simply entered this vessel. I’m not really alive, so I can’t die. Not even at Lancastrian hands.”

For several seconds, everything was quiet, and even the obliterated man half-hanging from Xal’s shoulder seemed sober. And then Xal’s lips parted in a wide, toothy grin.

Everyone burst into hysterics, the ruckus so loud the brothers found themselves covering their ears regardless of their metaphysical state.

“Tell me, Samhradhán, do spirits like spirits?”

Xal once again caught what Sam could only assume was his friend when he lurched forward. “We surely do, Sichfrith. We extra surely do.” He stumbled sideways, barely able to keep them both standing, and it looked so strange for a man in jeans and a black jacket to be catching another man wearing a muted, ragged robe that would have gone to the floor if it weren’t tied up in some places. “But I haven’t welded in weeks, so I’ve nothing to trade.”

Sam startled, an older man with a silver beard directly to his right letting out a loud, “Ha!” with one hand on his beer belly. “The rutting buck things kicking good ole Henry number six off the throne doesn’t cover a whiskey or two!”

Xal made a sign with his hand and put it at his groin before flicking his hand toward the man with a loud, “Well, somebody has to rut in your wife’s bed to please her, Tothan, and we all know it shan’t be you!”

Laughter once against swelled in the room, and Xal took the mug that Sichfrith grabbed from the end of the bar for him. He drained the whole thing in seconds and lifted it high. “To the throne!”

“To the throne,” the crowd shouted.

Xal took another mug, this one from the bartender by his right foot, and once again gulped it down before raising it high. “To a king who deserves it!”

“To King Richard!”

He grabbed a third, but this time he lifted it before he took a drink, looking around the room with a broad smile showing his teeth. “And last in order but first in importance, to every one of us. To our joy, our prosperity, and to an eternity of souls inseparably intertwined by the blood we’ve spilled, saved, and sacrificed. To us!”

“To us!” the bar screamed.

Someone started pounding their fists, then others joined in, and then a stringed instrument and some kind of flute began to play as Sichfrith started singing. Xal downed his final mug and tossed it aside, jumping from the bar as the patrons started dancing, shoving the tables and chairs aside as they turned and twirled around and between each other, singing some kind of song where it sounded like every verse was a new reason to have another drink before you call it quits for the night.

“Frith!” Xal hopped back onto the bar, throwing his hand out. “Dance with me!”

Sichfrith wagged and uncoordinated finger. “I’m the singer, Samhradhán, not the dancer.”

“Anyone with blood as thin as yours is a dancer, lovely moron!” Xal beckoned the other with his fingers. “Come on, Frithy. I promise not to tell Tochumra how ridiculous you looked.”

Sam reached up to touch his mouth, wondering why the scene made him smile. Not that it wasn’t the kind of thing that would make someone smile, but… it wasn’t the kind of thing that would make a Winchester smile. And Sam wasn’t in a good mood, or a good place, or a good anything.

“Come on.” Dean spoke loudly, unable to mutter given the noise. “He got drunk and partied. I don’t think there’s anything else we’re supposed to see.” He started walking, following an abnormally obvious swath through the still-entangled crowd.

I guess this is the road still… Sam took another look just as Xal and Sichfrith fell off the bar and onto some patrons, laughing hysterically as they all crumpled to the ground. We should keep walking. He followed Dean through the divide, and it eventually led to a back exit. They stepped through, and he hated the silence that settled over them. Are Dean and I ever going to be like that again? He thought of super glue on a beer bottle. He hates me. I know he hates me. And Sam knew no explanation would satisfy.

He couldn’t lie and say they weren’t some of his favorite memories, but he couldn’t explain them. Dean would never listen. That was why they were favorite memories. The only thing worse than leaving was staying and spending every waking moment wishing you could work up the courage to leave. And leaving was a chance to not spend at least an hour a week saying the same things over and over and over, only to be ignored every time. If I stay and argue, I’m wrong. If I give up and walk away, I’m wrong.

And what was the common denominator?

I was born wrong. I should have died in the fire with Mom. I should have died instead of Mom. Sam opened his mouth to utter some kind of apology, not that he thought it would have any kind of value given the circumstances.

“I feel like we’re going uphill.” Dean looked around with a sigh. “Any sign of the angel searchlights?”

Sam looked around, and despite the dark night they had walked into when they left the bar, there was an outline of maybe a hill or mountain and there was an orangish tint to everything around them. “Do you think ‘follow the road’ includes climbing? Or should we try to go around?”

“You want my advice? That’s funny. I thought you loved all that independent, go-your-own-way stuff.” Dean said it sarcastically, but Sam knew the voice. It didn’t have anger or defensiveness at its core. It was hurt.

“Everyone leaves me. And if they don’t, they spend all their time wishing they could.”

That was what the voice said. Because Dean’s lips would never dare.

I left because neither of you wanted me! Sam’s brain screamed back, once again trying to make up for a useless mouth that never did what it needed to. No one ever wants me; not the real me, the me that doesn’t fit your idea of who I should be, the me that isn’t everything you want. And Sam found himself wanting to turn around and go back to the moment Bones ran into his arms.

“There’s something up there.” Dean panted softly, nodding in the direction of an old, scraggly tree on the lefthand side of the path looking out at… a valley, maybe? Sam couldn’t make out anything beyond the drop off.

Sam picked up speed, anxious to have a distraction. He got to the tree and found an old woman and her adult son—or at least, Sam assumed that was the relationship—sitting and staring at the sunset.

“Are we supposed to wait for Hellcat to show up? Or do we just keep walking?” Dean asked, slowing to a stop and peering down at the salt-and-pepper-haired woman with a blue shawl wrapped around her shoulders. “I mean, this might not even be one of his memories. Maybe the closer we get to the Garden, the less we know about the people whose memories we’re seeing.”

Sam hummed in response and moved a little closer, crouching down to get a better look. She appeared peaceful, leaning into the side of a strong, well-built man with tanned skin and dark, messy curls, who kept looking down at her. He would reach over to adjust her shawl or pull her closer from time to time, and his eyes were glassy, the fading sun shining on the dark pools.

“Come on, Sam. We gotta get to the end and find Joshua.”

Sam frowned but nodded. “Yeah.” And he turned to go.

“I’ll never understand how people with perfectly healthy eyes can be so incapable of seeing.”

Sam stopped. Dean, who had been about two steps ahead, did the same.

“It’s right in front of you,” the woman sighed, a smile on her lips, “and you choose to keep looking elsewhere.”

Sam stared.

“Drishya?” Dean whispered.

She continued to smile, gazing endlessly at a sunset she could only imagine. “His wings are so dim.”

Sam swallowed and shook his head. “Who?”

“My angel.” She put a withered hand on the breast of her companion, the olive skin patterned with scars. “I’ve never seen them like this. Well, I have, because I’ve relived this memory before, but…” She sighed, pressing her cheek against his skin. “They’re normally so bright, just like the flames that went up your arm when he sealed his contract with you.”

Sam’s eyes widened, and he looked at Dean. Xal has wings?

“Oh, and when he would get angry or upset. He would see this particularly creepy old man following the young girls around the village, flirting with them and giving them gifts, and the fire would flare and spark, opal streaking through the amethyst, and… his eyes.” She sighed again. “I think it would break my heart if I saw what they look like now.”

Sam flinched inwardly, thinking of the stringy, black substance Xal had spewed over his lap.

“You won’t find Him.”

Two seconds of silence, and then Dean uttered a, “God?”

Drishya smiled faintly. “Hold on a moment.”

Stirring, the man’s right hand moved to cover hers. “Drishya?”

“It won’t be long, Sheshul. But I feel fine.” She paused, pressing her lips together. “Promise you’ll bury me right here?”

Dark eyes screwed shut, shoulders shuddering. “Mhm.” He sniffed, looking skyward as a tear rolled down his cheek. “Of course.” His voice cracked. “I said I would, didn’t I?”

One. Two. Three.

“I think, far too often, people misunderstand what true faith is.” It was clear she was speaking to the brothers again. “It is not a confidence that your prayer will be answered the way you want it to be. It is simply confidence that the prayer will be answered. Even if you do find Him… Yahweh is not one to make your problems disappear. In the wilderness, He didn’t take away the hunger of His children; He simply fed them.” She laughed softly, cloudy eyes moving in Sam’s direction. “When I was a child, I prayed for Surulahi to give me sight. I asked her to give me the ability to see. When I reached womanhood, I realized she had already done exactly that. Years of discouragement, thinking my faith was in vain or that I wasn’t doing enough to please her, when my request had already been granted years before.”

Sam swallowed, floundering for a moment. “What are you telling us?”

“You have all you need to win this war. But if you keep looking for a better weapon or an easier fix, you’re going to lose.”

Xal—it had to be Xal, but it was hard to see it when he looked so different—moved with a sharp inhale. “Drysdusa,” he said, his voice low and rich and thick. “Your energy changed.”

“Sheshul.” Drishya turned her hand to grab his instead of lying it flat on his breast. “It doesn’t hurt. I promise. I’m just getting sleepy.”

Screwing his eyes shut, Xal choked back a sob, curling around her in a way that made him seem more like the demon they knew. “I don’t want you to go!”

“Shush.” Drishya closed her eyes. “You better hurry down the road if you don’t want to be caught.” She heaved a sigh, voice quieter. “Tell me what the sunset looks like, Sheshul.”

Xal inhaled and blinked rapidly, pulling her close and drawing the blue cloth tighter around her shoulders. “It, ah, it’s—” he sniffed, “—it’s that color you see when you pick up a lapis, and it’s almost out of charge.” He wiped his face and sniffed again. “Or, uh, when I’ve forgotten to put the sheep bone in the hex bag, and you pick it up and in an instant sense it isn’t at full power.” He sobbed, sucked in a breath, and continued. “Up where it’s dark, it, uh—”

“Sam, look.” Dean grabbed Sam’s arm as he said it. “It’s the search light.”

Sam barely looked, trusting Dean enough to take the split-second glimpse of white as confirmation. He took off, feet pounding against the dirt as he ran shoulder to shoulder with Dean.

“You have all you need to win this war.”

Xal muttered an old, forgotten prayer to Ashterah when Dean and Sam gasped back to life, boots carrying him toward the beds but stopping short when he realized he probably didn’t look too innocent covered in Walt and Roy’s blood.

“Dean.” Castiel had a note of urgency in his voice, and Xal knew he was hoping for an answer on the location of God—or really any entity that might be able to help. “Were you able to find Joshua?”

Dean put a hand to his head, rubbing his sinuses and then gradually moving to his temple. “We found him. He said God isn’t getting involved.”

Castiel didn’t react outwardly, but Xal could feel the flinch in his essence. “Maybe Joshua was con—”

“He wasn’t,” Sam muttered, also rubbing his face, probably trying to soothe away the remnants of having his brain blown out.

“But,” Dean started, easing onto his feet and reaching out to put a hand on the wall by the head of the bed, “we did get some… I don’t know what you call that.”

Sam rubbed his face a few more times. “Encouragement?”

“Sounds dumb.” Dean shook his head a couple times and seemed to finally snap out of the Heaven Haze, coming back to the land of the living. “We were told, uh, basically, we have what we need to win this.”

Castiel tilted his head, clearly confused, but Sam didn’t give the angel a chance to pose his question.

“Faith is… not confidence that prayers are going to be answered the way you want. It’s—”

“—simply confidence the prayer will be answered,” Xal muttered, an ancient and feminine voice filtering through his mind before he came back to reality. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt. I, uh, I just—”

“It’s something Drishya used to say?” Dean offered, lifting a brow.

Xal stopped, heart skipping at Drishya’s name in Dean’s mouth. Why was he bringing Drishya up again? Wasn’t the information he got from Xal the first time around enough? Not to mention, why would they know the advice they received was advice Drishya had once given just because Xal finished the sente—

Blue-gray eyes widened, lips uttering a half whispered, half breathed, “She was there?”

Sam nodded. “Yeah. I don’t know why we were—”

“She’s in Heaven?” Xal choked out the words before realizing what he was asking—more importantly, what he was revealing—and he tried to recover. “Right, uh. Right. Right, she’s—” He sniffed, nodding a few times. “So, we have what we need.”

Sam opened his mouth, but Xal plowed ahead.

“I interrogated Roy and Walt, but they weren’t working for anyone other than themselves. Not Crowley, not Heaven, not even a larger group of hunters outside the two of them. Whatever threat they posed died with them. But they did tell me—”

“Died?” Dean exploded. “What do you mean died?”

“I—” Xal felt a second wave of adrenaline come over him. “They shot you. That—that means they’re enemies, right?”

Dean threw his hand out, gesturing at nothing in particular. “You don’t just kill people because they’re hunters who don’t play by the rules!”

Xal took a step back, brain shifting into overdrive as he tried to make the jump from avoiding a vulnerable discussion to apologizing for something he initially thought would be accepted with gratitude as something helpful. “I—” wetting his lips, he tried to think on his feet, gaze flickering over to Sam, who was still digesting the news, and then flickering over to Castiel, who—

—who stared back at him, unwavering, a very clearly expectant look on his face.

“You need to take more advantage of your deal, Xochiquetzal. You can do quite a lot, and just because they are angry at you, as long as they are both alive, they cannot be the ones to exorcise or kill you.”

“You don’t just—”

“You kill monsters left and right,” Xal shot back, reclaiming the step he lost, “and you would do the same to any human if Sam were on the line.” He balled up his fists, willing them not to shake as he stared up at Dean. “They killed Sam, and they killed you. If I let them live, there was no guarantee they wouldn’t try again or gather more hunters to help them get the job done. I did what I thought was best to keep everyone safe.”

“Everyone but them,” was Dean’s lackluster response.

“Everyone who matters to me,” was Xal’s much more passionate one.

Silence hung in the room, and Xal could see Dean was angry—there was a raging fire in the shades of green—but it started to fade, and when only disgust remained, the eyes flickered over to Sam instead. “Yeah,” Dean muttered, his voice thick. “Always gotta think about who matters to you.”

Sam ducked his head, and Xal knew he was missing context, but just as he was deciding whether to dig, Dean reached out and took Xal’s arm. Tensing, Xal let himself be pulled a little closer, but Dean merely sighed and pulled on the dark purple hoodie.

“Three out of four of us are covered in blood. We’re looking like the walking personification of Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” Dean let go of Xal and looked toward his brother and angel. “We need to pack up and hit the road before anyone comes to investigate, and then we’ll hit a truck stop or something on our way. And the blood on his clothes—” he jerked his head toward Xal, “—isn’t his own, so we better burn that somewhere over the county line. Let’s get moving, people.”

“I’ll get our stuff.” Sam spoke quietly, getting up from the bed and moving toward the duffel bag in the corner without letting his gaze go anywhere near Dean.

Castiel looked at Dean, and Xal couldn’t read the expression, but he could tell it wasn’t a good one. “And… you’re certain you didn’t misunderstand what Joshua said?”

“God’s not interested, Cas. Not even a little bit. No room for misunderstandings.” Dean opened his mouth with an inhale like he was going to continue, but he let the air back out in a sigh instead. “Come on. We gotta get the bodies out of here. Hellcat can stay with Sam, you come with me, and like I said, we gotta move.”

Xal watched them leave and then looked back at Sam, who was still kneeling by the duffel bag, clearly trying to make himself look busy. And Xal was still stuck on the idea of Drishya being in Heaven and not some other, interdimensional void where souls that took in so much darkness and poured out so much light wound up in the end, but he was able to push that aside. He glanced at the dresser and grabbed the pistol Dean usually kept under his pillow, walking over and holding it out for Sam to tuck it in the bag.

But Sam apparently didn’t see him, and he just kept steadily breathing, moving things around in the duffel like he was looking for something even though he definitely wasn’t.

“Sam.” Xal moved his hand slightly. “Here.”

Sam’s head jerked up, doing something between a gasp and a sniff, lips instinctively pulling into a smile in the corner. “Yeah, thanks.”

Xal waited for Sam to take the weapon, his hand slowly falling back to his hip afterward. He leaned to the left slightly, ducking down just a bit and catching a glimpse of Sam’s face before he turned his head.

“My laptop is on the floor by my bed with my bag. And, uh, my charger is there, and my notebook might be there, too.” Sam cleared his throat.

Xal tread carefully, wetting his lips and glancing toward the open door before looking back at Sam. “Maybe you and Dean should—” he choked on his words, swallowed, and then doubled down. “Maybe you and Dean should work on having the kind of relationship where you can say things the other doesn’t want to hear without coming to blows.”

Sam tensed, a bitter laugh rising in his throat. “He has every right to break my nose over this.”

“No, he doesn’t.” Xal wet his lips, trying to read the look on Sam’s face.

Sam snorted. “You don’t know what I did; what he just saw.”

For a moment, Xal just stared, and then a small laugh rose in his throat, his hand coming up to cover his mouth. “I don’t know what you did?” He smiled to himself, and part of it was an act, but part of it was a genuine amusement that sometimes came over him when he witnessed human ignorance. “Do you have any idea what I’ve seen?”

Sam slowly looked up from the duffle, brow furrowed.

“You’re a little baby boy, Sam. You haven’t had enough time to pull off the kind of evil you seem to think you have. I have lived through centuries of human depravity. I’ve been a child soldier, and I lived in Louisiana at the height of slavery. I’ve stood by as people were tortured in the public square, and I’ve gotten halfway through a meal before finding out I was eating my host’s least useful child.” Xal leaned forward, watching the horror creep across Sam’s face, and he lowered his voice. “I don’t know what kind of evil you think is inside you, but I promise you, humanity has been a festering petri dish of degenerate malevolence since its inception.” He shook his head, his lips pulling into a smile that almost incredulous but, hopefully, relayed the fondness warming his chest. “You’re not special, Sam. You’re just another man walking the same road as every one of the billions who came before you. And on that list—at least the list of the ones I’ve encountered—you are nowhere near the bottom.”

One, two, three beats of silence, gazes fighting to pierce the other more intensely, and with shaking hands and a racing heart, Xal decided he had pushed himself enough for one day. “I’ll go get your computer.”

Sam was silent. So was Xal.

“You’re dark… and damaged… but you’re still good.”

“I promise you, I’m not.”

“As I said, eyes that work and possession of sight are two very different things.”

Xal crouched down and unplugged the laptop, a faint smile pulling on his lips.

“Thank you.” And then Sam was silent.

And so was Xal.

Chapter Text

“You need to talk to them.”

Castiel tilted his head three eighths of an inch to the left. “About what?” He blinked. “That was the wrong question. To what end?”

Xochiquetzal sighed, and if Castiel was getting any better at reading faces, the demon was painfully aware of the futility in his request.

“I agree something needs to be done. I am just uncertain it is something we have the power to put into motion.”

Xochiquetzal spoke urgently. “They won’t talk to each other. They barely look at each other. We can’t win this fight with them—” He stopped, cut off by a tone in his pocket Castiel didn’t recognize, which was strange because Castiel had everyone’s ringtones memorized. Xochiquetzal also seemed confused at first, but then his eyes went wide, hand flying to his pocket. He whipped the phone open and answered it with a rushed, “Lyssa?”

I do not know who that is.

“Slow down, slow—okay, you need to breathe. Just breathe, okay?” Xochiquetzal spoke evenly into the phone, gesturing with his hand even though his conversational partner couldn’t see it. “Start at the beginning.” He made eye contact then. “Actually, let me put you on speaker. I’m here with a friend, and he’s not going to say anything,” he used his eyes to emphasize importance, “but I want him to listen.”

Castiel watched Xochiquetzal put the phone on speaker, and then a woman’s voice came through, frantic and choked with tears. Probably tears. It could also have been a breathing problem, like asthma. Or maybe—

“Do you remember Trevor?”

“Yeah. He took you to senior prom, and he’s the only boyfriend you ever ended things on good terms with.”

She didn’t say anything, continuing to cry.

“Alyssa, talk to me.” Xochiquetzal spoke forcefully. “What’s wrong?”

“Someone killed him!” she cried, and Castiel was fairly certain now that it was crying.

Xochiquetzal squinted. “What?”

“Daisy went to check on him when he didn’t show up for work—” she spoke through stuttering breaths, and Castiel really wished she would stop because it was hard to understand her, “—and she found him on the floor!” She dissolved into hysterics again.

Scowling, Xochiquetzal seemed to consider his approach. It was almost like he was making conscious decisions about what to say and how to say it, even though he was dealing with emotions rather than equations. “Alyssa, I’m… I’m so sorry.” He slowly exhaled, shaking his head. “Do they have any suspects?”

“They don’t even have a cause of death yet!” Alyssa stopped to blow her nose. “Daisy said she walked in, and the smell of rotten food just slammed into her even though his trash was on the curb. She walked around that—you know, that wall between the—that? She walked around it, and there was just blood and—and Trevor everywhere!” She sobbed, practically screaming. “How is that going to help?”

Castiel glanced up from the device and found Xochiquetzal standing stiff, his eyes wide.

“She called the cops, and they roped everything off, but it’s been hours, and they haven’t told her anything. All she has—all anyone has—is buckets of blood and a bad smell! And they won’t even say why they’re not giving us anything!”

Xochiquetzal swallowed. “Lyssa, you’re going to think I’m insane, but did she say what kind of rotten food? Like, was it fishy, or…?”

“I don’t know.” She blew her nose again. “Rotten dairy, maybe? Like bad milk? Rotten eggs? How much rotten food do people even smell in their lives to be able to answer that?” Her voice broke at the end.

Xochiquetzal muttered a curse. “I’m, uh—” he made brief eye contact with Castiel, seeming panicked, “—I’m gonna make a trip home. Okay? I just, uh, don’t like the thought of you going through this alone.”

Castiel quirked a brow, confused but thoroughly intrigued.

“Adam, last time we talked, you were in South Dakota! You—”

“I’ve been traveling,” Xochiquetzal cut in. “I’m much closer to Missouri. Trust me.”

That… is technically not a lie, I suppose. Castiel reminded himself Xochiquetzal was talking to someone else, not him. I can see the harmlessness and good intentions in it, regardless.

“Just stay with Mom. Let her take care of you.” He inhaled sharply. “How’s Jonah? And Livie?”

Alyssa stopped and took a shaky breath, her voice congested when she continued. “I think they’re okay. I—I’ve been such a mess, I didn’t even—”

“Hey, it’s okay.”

“I’m a horrible big sister.”

“No, you’re not. I’ll be home soon, okay?”

She sniffed. “Thank you, Adam. So much.” Another sniff. “I love you.”

“Love you, too.” Xochiquetzal snapped his phone shut, panic alight in his eyes. “I have to make a trip home—I mean, my vessel’s home. Please, you have to convince Sam and Dean to let me go.”

Castiel squinted, confused. “Would we not all go together?” No, wait. “Why the urgency?”

Bearing a baffled look of his own, Xochiquetzal pointed to the phone. “Didn’t you hear wha—Castiel, rotten eggs is the universal description for the smell of sulfur.”

“Ah.” Castiel nodded sharply. “That makes this situation much clearer, thank you. We should wake them immediately.”

“Wait, what?”

But Castiel had already flown. “Dean.” He pushed the shoulder that bore his handprint and then turned toward the other bed. “Sam.”

“Hmm?” Dean rolled over and blinked up at the angel with bleary, unfocused eyes.

“Xochiquetzal and I have learned of some demonic activity that needs our attention.”

Sam yawned, a sound that dissolved into a mumbled, “What kinda activity?”

Xochiquetzal burst through the door, slightly out of breath. “Castiel, we’re not all going together. This is just me making a quick detour—”

“You’re not going to fight an unknown demonic force by yourself,” Castiel intoned, not even considering the idea. “We will go together.”

Dean pushed himself up on one arm, rubbing his eyes with the other. “Why do you wanna go on your own anyway, Hellcat?”

Xochiquetzal swallowed nervously. “My vessel’s family is involved.”

“Your…?” There was a beat, and then Dean jarred awake. “Your vessel’s family?”

Xochiquetzal’s lips twitched into a weak smile, unwilling or unable to summon words.

Silence hung for a moment, and then Sam cleared his throat. “Sounds like it could be pretty bad.” He threw the covers off, dressed as always, but lacking shoes for a change. “We better get going.”

Castiel glanced between the brothers and then Xochiquetzal, trying to determine which things were causing which tensions. Sam and Dean hadn’t been on good terms since the trip to Heaven, but now Xochiquetzal was uncomfortable, and Castiel wasn’t sure if it was simply concern for his vessel’s family, or if it was unhappiness about the constant conflict between his two handlers, or if it had something to do with those handlers being involved with his vessel’s family and their current situation.

It could be a combination of all three, but it’s unlikely each aspect is impacting him in equal measure. In a way, Castiel was grateful for Sam and Dean’s ongoing tension, and that gratitude was extending to Xochiquetzal’s equally unbalanced state. Deciphering them and their emotions kept him from examining his own, which he had been avoiding for days, and Xochiquetzal’s tended to be the most convoluted and multifaceted. It will become clear eventually. He would just have to wait and continue his observation.

Dean had no idea what to expect. At all. Even with his predisposition to assume the worst, especially when it came to demons, he wasn’t really sure what he thought the worst would  be. Maybe he’ll hold Adam’s family hostage until we remove his sigils and seals. But despite himself, he couldn’t see Xal doing that, and even if he could, the Stallworths were four people. It was hard to hold one or two people hostage by yourself, let alone four.

“Do you remember what I told you?” Xal asked, his voice already changing, the slight increase in softness and warmth almost imperceptible, even to Dean’s diligent ear. “Are there any questions about what I told you? You know the names? Ages? No questions about Adam’s accident?”

Sam smirked faintly—he hadn’t worn a genuine smile since their field trip—and closed the passenger side door. “If we do forget anything, we’ll cover for ourselves, and you can just say you haven’t known us very long.” He looked around the modest, suburban development they had driven into Aurora, Missouri to find. “Which house is theirs?”

Dean closed his own door and patted down his jacket out of habit. His gun was there, and as Xal indicated the two-story house with white siding and blue trim, Dean found himself thinking that, while he had no idea what to expect, he was as prepared as he could be.

They started down the sidewalk, Xal taking the lead while Castiel trailed shortly behind, which was yet another thing gnawing on Dean’s brain. Why were they so chummy all of a sudden? Ever since rebelling against Heaven, Castiel hadn’t seemed particularly disgusted by Xal, but he had been far from friendly. Now, however, that seemed to have changed. Great. Sam didn’t want him, Castiel had a new friend—what was Dean even doing there?

Quit your whining. Dean rolled his shoulders and feigned a casual air, hanging back as Xal stopped on the front stoop to take a deep breath.

“You okay?” Sam asked.

Xal jerked his head in a nod. “Yeah.” He lifted his hand and knocked.

There were a few seconds of awkward silence, and then the deadbolt slid and the door swung in, a petite woman with laugh lines and familiar, reddish-brown hair waiting on the other side. “Oh, Adam.” She smiled and spread her arms. “Welcome home, sweetie!”

“Hey, Mom.” Xal leaned over the threshold, winding his arms around the slightly shorter woman. “How is she?”

“Terrible.” She looked concerned, but there was a perkiness to her that Dean couldn’t quite decide what he thought of. “I haven’t seen her like this since you had your accident, and she keeps trying to get off the couch and do things, but she needs to rest now so she can be ready to go back to campus—” she looked past Xal to the rest of the group, “—she’s getting her master’s in chemistry, you know—”she went right back to Xal, “—and I keep trying to tell her, and I just don’t—you know, I feel so bad saying this, but I didn’t really keep up with Trevor. He was my favorite of all her boyfriends, of course, but he grew distant after they broke up. I mean, obviously, this is horrible regardless of whether I knew him well or not, I’m just—”

“It’s okay. You’re worried about Alyssa, not him, and that’s fine.” Xal was facing away from Dean, but there was a smile in his tone. “Mom,” he turned and gestured to the gathering behind him, “these are the friends I told you about. This is Sam and Dean—they’re brothers—and this is Cas.” He turned to the group and gestured to the woman. “This is my mother, Carina Aspen-Stallworth.”

Sam held his hand out. “Pleasure to meet you. Sorry it’s under these circumstances.”

Dean did his own shake and then looked at Castiel, who had squinted at all the hands being moved around before eventually falling on the one Carina extended toward him.

“Oh, Mom.” Xal gently pushed her arm down. “No handshakes. Cas is a bit autistic.”

Dean blinked. What? Why would—?

“Oh! Just like my Jonah!” Carina clasped her hands together under her chin and flashed a big smile, seeming overjoyed. “That’s so wonderful! Jonah gets so upset when he’s already stressed out and then has to deal with people coming around, nagging and pestering him over the stupidest things.” She opened her mouth to continue.

“Mom,” Xal interrupted gently. “I’d really like to come in and see Alyssa.”

“Oh!” Carina gasped. “Of course, yes, absolutely. Sorry. You know me.”

Chuckling softly, Xal pushed into the house, stopping to give her a peck on the cheek. “Yes, I do. You always ramble when you’re upset.” He gave her arm a squeeze. “Ramble to Sam and Dean, okay? Cas and I are gonna go sit with Alyssa.” He disappeared into the house, and after Castiel realized he would have to walk with his feet instead of just willing himself inside, he followed behind, leaving a perplexed and weirded-out pair of brothers on the porch.

“Ahem.” Carina brushed her hair back, and now that Dean knew the rapid speech was a tell, it was all too obvious she wasn’t actually perky like he originally thought. “Sorry, ahem, please come in. Would you like some tea? Or we have soda, apple juice, grape juice,” she fell into a list as she led them in and to the left, “sparkling water, coffee, hot tea, iced tea, apple juice, lemonade, um… Oh! I can make a latte for you, if you like.” She pointed over her shoulder to a coffee bar under the window of what looked like a dining room. “I have a milk frother! And more syrup flavors than I could ever possibly need.”

Sam gave his usual smile of softness and empathy and ‘feeling your pain’ as he accepted the offer, probably hoping to keep her occupied with the latte-making process. “I would really appreciate a latte, Carina. Just some kind of vanilla or caramel would be great.” He moved toward the island that seemed to take the place of a dining table. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Oh, no, no, I’ve got everything under control. You just sit there looking handsome, and I’ll take care of the rest!” She turned toward the bar, leaving Sam to open his mouth and then close it without her ever noticing the look on his face. She was already messing with what Dean could only assume was a milk frother.

“So,” Sam eased onto a barstool, “we don’t really know much about the… Trevor Situation. Adam never really disclosed a lot about you guys and your personal lives, so we were caught off guard when Adam suddenly told us his sister’s ex-boyfriend was—or, I guess…” He huffed, feigning confusion that melted into a chuckle. “It was actually really confusing. Would you mind explaining a little? Just a quick, start-to-finish summary, if that’s alright?”

“Of course!” Carina continued bustling around the dining room—kitchen?—but she kept her attention on them, eyes flickering between whatever task her hands were doing and Sam or Dean. “Trevor and Alyssa dated from late high school into college. They were very serious, but… they wanted different things, and there was some… incompatibilities.” She cleared her throat, grabbing milk, grabbing cups, and generally never ceasing to move for even a second. “Anyway, they broke up, but they stayed friends. I was actually quite impressed with their ability to be involved in each other’s lives while keeping such good boundaries! When I tried to stay in touch with my long-term college-era ex, well, there was nothing good about it. Every time we—”

Sam cleared his throat to ease the transition of his interruption and gently redirected. “And you said it was different with Alyssa and Trevor? And that’s why Alyssa called Adam so upset?”

Dean took the line of questioning smoothly, and while he was hesitant to leave the wall by the front door that allowed him to see both the coffee bar and the edge of Castiel’s trench coat near the entrance to the living room, he tried to stay engaged with what was happening to his left. “Adam and Alyssa are pretty close then? Even after the, uh, accident?” Which, if he remembered correctly, was a head-on collision with a drunk driver.

Carina paused, the brief silence standing in stark contrast to the endless stream of consciousness she had previously been spewing. “It took a little time. Not on her end, of course, but…” She wet her lips, both hands on the humming frother. “I don’t know how much Adam shared with you—I don’t know how much he can share, because I don’t think he really understands how much he lost—but he didn’t really know much of… well, anything… when he came back.”

Dean waited a beat, and it seemed like maybe she was done, so he opened his mouth.

“Braindead, they told us. Even if he woke up, he would be in a vegetative state for the rest of his life. And Adam, he was… so full of life and so active and so…” She took a trembling breath and tilted her head back, sniffing. “Oh, listen to me.” She dabbed at her eyes and went to the fridge. “It doesn’t matter. He woke up, fully functioning, and the only problem was his memory loss. May 4^th he was gone for good, and May 6^th he was back from the dead. I can hardly complain about that, can I?” She poured the foam into a cup. “Can hardly complain about that.” She carried the latte to Sam and jumped right back into her busywork. “How did we even get on the topic?”

Dean opened his mouth again.

“Oh! Yes, Adam and Alyssa. He didn’t recognize her at first, but even in those early days, when he wasn’t sure who he was or what was going on, he gravitated toward her, just like when he was little. Following her around, asking her questions—and you know?” She jumped to a new track so seamlessly, Dean started to wonder if she had ever had a single conversation make it from start to finish without a detour. “It was strange, the questions he was asking. It wasn’t always… memory questions. He was confused by cellphones but understood the landline. He knew how record players worked, but he had no memory of CDs, let alone MP3 players. He absolutely loved it when she helped him figure out his Walkman, and he was dumbfounded by the internet. It was almost like…”

…like the last time he had been on Earth, it was the 1970s?

“Well, anyway. What were we talking about?” Carina paused, looking down at the device that had foamed up a second round of milk. “Adam and Alyssa! Right, so he followed her around, asking all kinds of questions. She took him shopping on more than a few occasions because he said he couldn’t remember what style of clothes he liked—such and such like that. Oh! And there was another time…”

Dean fought the urge to sigh. This is going to be a long hunt.

Castiel tried not to get distracted by the art on the wall. Well, Xochiquetzal’s sister said it was art. But it was just… lines and squares. And not the kind Castiel liked. He had seen lines and squares he found appealing—like the flannel shirts his humans often wore—and he was fond of miscellaneous angles and blocks in general, but…

“Did Trevor say anything about anyone… I don’t know, following him or cold calling him over the past few weeks? Months?” Xochiquetzal sat sideways on the couch to face his sister, one leg tucked underneath himself. “Any cars in the area he didn’t recognize but suddenly saw a lot?”

Alyssa sniffed, one hand anxiously fisting a tissue while the other grasped Xochiquetzal’s on the cushion between them. “Um, he…” She looked upward and sniffed. “I mean, he said he had gotten more, uh, charity and spam calls, but… he always hung up right away or deleted the voicemails if he missed the call itself. But that was it.” She pressed her lips together, eyes welling up.

“He said he got more of them… when, exactly?” Xochiquetzal approached the topic with a kind of caution that was so… tender. It made Castiel curious. Cautious words often implied the recipient was a threat, but this was an introspective caution—caution for fear of causing harm. It was a thoughtful, gingerly-coordinated dance, and it was something Castiel figured came with human experience; human experience Castiel was determined to cultivate.

“I don’t know… a few months ago?” She dabbed her eyes with the tissue in her fist.

Xochiquetzal nodded slowly, looking over his shoulder at Castiel with a silent question in his eyes, but turning back to Alyssa when all the angel could offer was a shrug. “Did he ever mention anything… strange? I know you said no people or cars, but… what about strange happenings? Not even strange, just… new. Electricity going haywire, cold areas in the house even though it’s almost July…” He trailed off.

Sniffing, Alyssa tilted her head and furrowed her brow in confusion. “Yeah, he mentioned stuff like that, but… what does that have to do with what happened?”

Xochiquetzal offered a faint but reassuring smile. “I’m honestly thinking a little outside the box right now, sis. We can’t think of anyone he knew who would’ve gotten that mad on the fly… so maybe it wasn’t a crime of passion. Maybe someone has been messing with him for a while. Trying to hurt him in other ways or make his death look accidental by putting stuff in the vents or stripping wires… and maybe they just ran out of options or got tired of waiting or…”

Alyssa pressed the tissue to her mouth as a sob burst up her throat. She ducked her head and shook it back and forth, her tissue-holding hand moving to clutch at the heathered, gray sweatshirt.

“It’s okay, Lyssa.” Xochiquetzal squeezed her hands and inched closer. “Hey, it’s okay.”

She took a few deep breaths and cleared her throat, collecting herself before she reengaged. “I didn’t think of that. I’m just so—so stuck in—” she waved her hand blindly, “—and I can’t—” She pulled her other hand from Xochiquetzal’s and framed her face, looking down at her lap and taking two deep breaths before she straightened up and let out a long stream of air, throwing her reddish-brown curls back away from her face. “Alright. Okay. So, if this was a—a planned-out, first degree…” she waved her hand again, “then we should start with my phone. Between his work schedule and my class schedule, we rarely talked on the phone—I mean, like, verbally. It was all texts and emails.”

Xochiquetzal intercepted her hands as she reached for a device she had knocked to the floor several minutes earlier, when Castiel was still investigating the so-called art. “Hey. How about we just take a look for ourselves? Maybe it would be best if you… didn’t relive those conversations right now.” He bit his lip.

“No, no, I’ll be fine.” Alyssa’s lip was wobbling a mere .29 seconds after she spoke, and Castiel got the idea she would not be ‘fine.’

“It’s me, Lyssa. You can turn off the default settings.” Xochiquetzal flashed a smile and reached for the phone, placing it in his lap without taking his eyes off her. “We’ll let you know if we find anything. Okay?”

Nodding, she pulled her hands inside her sweatshirt sleeves and pressed the excess fabric to her reddened, swollen face. She sniffed, struggling to keep her breathing steady. Her heart was well past the point where it could be calmed, but Castiel figured it probably wasn’t a good idea to mention that.

“Cas.” Xochiquetzal grabbed the phone and slid it open sideways, touching a few things before handing it over. “Start looking through these, please. I’ll join you in a minute.”

Castiel took the phone and immediately recognized the victim’s name at the top of the screen. Textual messages, then. He knew the most recent messages were always at the bottom, so he started pressing the up arrow, reading their conversations in reverse.

Blue eyes flickered back and forth across the letters and symbols, taking in everything from complaining about the endlessness of laundry and bills to a discussion about the sudden and unfortunate passing of the victim’s grandmother. However, it didn’t seem there was anything supernatural about the inconveniences or familial death, so he didn’t consider them relevant. But relevant incidents did start to appear, and he soon had a rapidly growing list about things like the lights flickering and the cable constantly going out even though it was fine for everyone else on the block. Granted, he didn’t know what cables had to do with anything, but it seemed pertinent, as did the victim lamenting a need for fuzzy socks even though it was May because he would be walking around the house and suddenly hit a ‘wall of cold,’ or so he said.

“…anything, right?” Xochiquetzal was asking when Castiel tuned back into the room.

“I know.” Alyssa wiped her eyes, and despite Castiel understanding her desire to remove the ever-replenishing tears, he wondered if he should advise that continued rubbing would only irritate her inflamed facial skin further.

No. I should focus on the mission. “Xochiquetzal, I’ve found something.” Castiel immediately stopped, cut off by the realization of his mistake. “I apologize. That was, uh… the autism.”

Alyssa blinked. “What?”

Xochiquetzal jumped in, presumably to build on the lie. “Cas has a bit of a fixation on demonology, so he gives people demon names in his head. Kinda helps him, uh, classify and sort everyone he interacts with.” He swallowed. “He, uh, he just forgets to call people by their real name sometimes, and he uses the demon one instead.”

Castiel had no idea what Xochiquetzal was talking about, but he nodded solemnly and pushed the conversation toward its original destination. “Adam, I’ve found several messages discussing unusual happenings in the victim’s house.”

Alyssa let out a quiet sob, and Xochiquetzal once again spoke quickly. “He didn’t mean it like that. He’s sympathetic, he just—”

“No, no, it’s okay.” Alyssa fanned herself, blinking rapidly. “He’s just like Jonah.” She laughed, and it was weak in volume but seemed genuine. “When I told everyone about Trevor, you know, um, Jonah immediately asked, ‘Did the coroner rule it Natural, Accidental, Suicide, Homicide, Undetermined, or Pending Toxicology?’” She laughed again, shaking her head. “Just helping in the ways that make sense to him.”

“I seem to be causing… problems.” Castiel almost took a step but hesitated, not knowing what move was the best one to make. “I can—I will go see if there’s anything—”

“No, stay, please.” Alyssa pushed herself backward until she was pressed against the arm of the sofa, hands beckoning her brother. “Come on. Make some room.”

Xochiquetzal smiled at her and moved accordingly, turning to pat the cushion and turn that smile to Castiel. “You’re doing fine, Cas.”

“I was…” Castiel approached the couch, sitting at the opposite end from Alyssa, and he held out his phone. “I was simply going to say it seems the first message about unusual happenings was on March 4^th, 2009.”

Xochiquetzal choked—though on what, Castiel didn’t know, because the demon wasn’t eating or drinking anything—and his head snapped around. “What?”

“I said it seems—”

“March 4^th? Of this year?”

Castiel slowly nodded, bewildered and slightly unnerved at the wide eyes and panicked expression on Xochiquetzal’s face. “Yes. That is what I said.”

Alyssa reached for Xochiquetzal’s shoulder. “Adam, wh—”

Xochiquetzal jumped to his feet and made a beeline for the door. “Sorry. Need a second.” He disappeared through the living room archway, and the front door slammed a moment later.

“I…” Castiel looked at Alyssa, who seemed just as confused as he was, and then toward the kitchen, where Sam and Dean were still questioning Carina. Standing up, he strode toward the door and flew outside the second he was out of human sight. “Xochiquetzal, what’s wrong?”

Xochiquetzal didn’t stop—didn’t even slow—keeping his face to the sidewalk and his fists at his sides. Castiel took hurried steps, keeping up without overtaking, and he caught a glimpse of a face tight with something he could only identify as not angry or scared.

“Xochiquetzal, why are you leaving?”

“It’s my fault,” the demon gasped, grabbing the Impala’s back door handle only to find it locked. He slammed his fist against the glass and swore, turning around and falling back against the car. “It’s my fault.” He lowered his head, pressing his hands to the sides.

Castiel briefly noticed Drysdusa inside the car, pawing at the window as she tried to get to her owner, but he quickly put his focus back on Xochiquetzal. “I don’t understand.”

“Hey! What’s going on?” Dean hollered nearby, apparently drawn to the disturbance.

Xochiquetzal screwed his eyes shut. “I let them escape.” He leaned forward slightly. “I shouldn’t have recited the counter-exorcism. I should have just let them send me back. They never would have done this if I just let them send me back!”

Castiel slowly started piecing things together. “You were missing on March 4^th… You’re talking about the demons you fought on March 3^rd.”

“I used a counter-exorcism on the one but not the other three. That first one was lost in Hell, and Lilith would have had to go looking for her, but the other three probably went right to Lilith the second they left that warehouse.” Xochiquetzal pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes.

“Counter-exorcism?” Dean asked.

“Wouldn’t they have chased you before going back to Lilith?” Sam questioned.

Xochiquetzal gripped the messy strands of reddish-brown hair his vessel’s family so proudly sported. “Once I exorcised the woman, the other three were afraid to try exorcising me. They couldn’t kill me—not without the knife, which you have—and I could counter something that wasn’t there, so we were at a stalemate. They tortured me as much as they could and then gave up and left.” He muttered under his breath. “And I let them. If I had just let the first one exorcise me…”

Castiel tilted his head. “As I recall, you were barely able to stand when you arrived at the motel. I fail to see how you ‘let’ them do anything leading up to that.” He looked at Sam and Dean. “But he is most likely correct: the demons went straight to Lilith, and she began tormenting those close to the Stallworths to indirectly hurt Xochiquetzal, starting with Alyssa’s retired boyfriend.”

Dean looked back and forth between the angel and the demon, mouth moving disjointedly in a fish-ish sort of way Castiel found funny, though he didn’t know why. Meanwhile, Sam had settled on an expression of deep thought and concern, lips gradually parting as he formed a question he probably intended to pose.

“Adam!” Alyssa jogged down the sidewalk in stocking feet, messy hair bouncing against her shoulders. “Adam, what’s wrong? What does March 4^th mean?”

Xochiquetzal swore in Welsh. “I can’t believe I lost it like that,” he muttered. “Quick, what do we tell her?”

“Uh—” Sam turned toward the sister, but Castiel could hear the lack of an answer in the way the sound cut off.

Thankfully, Dean jumped in seamlessly. “It’s just, you know…” he stepped toward Alyssa and lowered his voice, “…his accident was May 4^th, and now this thing happened with Trevor that might be connected to March 4^th.” He sucked air through his teeth. “Fourth day of a single-syllable month beginning with M? It’s kinda eerie. Freaked him out a little, that’s all.”

Alyssa immediately nodded. “Oh, yes, of course.” She leaned so she could see around Dean and gave Xochiquetzal a warm smile. “Come back inside, and I’ll make some cider for you.”

“…with the spices?” Xochiquetzal asked softly, apparently slipping back into his human role.

“Duh. There’s no other way to make it for the Cider Sommelier.” She relaxed, her smile growing playful as she rolled her still glassy, bloodshot eyes.

It was so strange to Castiel that some humans did that. Smiled and laughed while looking so utterly distraught at the same time. He tried to remember if he had ever seen Sam or Dean do something similar, and he didn’t think he had, but he had seen more than once human play the part. It was confusing, but in an enticing and intriguing way.

“Thanks, Lyssa.”

“Sure. C’mon.”

Castiel hung back as the humans gravitated back to the house, blue eyes scrutinizing the postures and gaits, angelic ears trying to decipher the tones. They’ll make sense to me someday, he thought, very certainly. If I watch them long enough, they’ll make sense.

“Xochiquetzal.”

Xal didn’t look up from the bloodstained hardwood, fingers tracing the edge of a long-gone puddle as Drysdusa sniffed around the opposite border.

“I know it isn’t ideal, but… I could alter the memories of the Stallworth family. If they have no memory of you, and they have no connection to you, then—”

“Erasing their memories of Adam wouldn’t do anything.” Xal slowly straightened up, pretending to follow the direction of the blood splatter with his eyes. In reality, they were unfocused, tired, and vacant. “It doesn’t matter if they know who I am; I know who they are. All Lilith has to do is let me know herself that she’s tormenting them, and it will have the same effect as them calling me for help.” His upper lip twitched, something like a sneer pulling on his mouth as he slid to his feet and approached the connected kitchenette. “Can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. C’est la viyi’l.”

“What?” Sam asked from the half of the living room he was investigating.

Xal barely reacted. “It’s actually c’est la vie.” He lifted Drysdusa from the floor by his right foot and plopped her gently on the counter so she could continue her own investigation, trying to use stories from the past to keep his mind off the present. “We had the French roots in Louisiana to know that phrase, but we also had a lot of contact with the Ishak in the area.” He messed with things on the counter, not really seeing anything he was doing. “Over time, our languages mingled, and… it’s basically a combination of c’est la vie and the word yi’l, which was ‘day’ in Eastern Atakapa. We used it the same way, it was just a little stronger and more… existential crisis-y. ‘For as long as there are days to pass, life will be as it always has been.’”

Silence settled over the house.

“Perhaps we can—”

Xal slammed down the bread box he had been looking under, trying to stay calm, especially because it wasn’t Castiel he was mad at. “You haven’t been on Earth long enough to learn this, Castiel, but there are some people who can only be stopped with death.” He gripped the sides of the polished wood, staring dead ahead as Drysdusa mewed unhappily nearby. “Sometimes, it’s just insufferableness. Someone who will always fight to make you mad, no matter what, until the day they die. Sometimes, it’s abusive. Someone who will track you down over and over, digging into your personal life and trying to force their way back into your good graces, until the day they die. Sometimes, it’s a mob mentality. People groups who refuse to stop until their enemy is wiped off the planet, and the only way to stop them, is to wipe them out first.” He dug his fingernails into the sides of the box, and somewhere in the back of his mind, he realized it was actually his claws he was driving through the lacquer. “Lilith is one of those people. We can do nothing to keep her away from the Stallworths except kill her. No matter what we do, she will find a way around it, and if we patch up the hole in our defenses, she will find a way around the fix. She will not stop until she is not alive to be stopped anymore. All we can do is what we’ve already been doing, which is tracking Lilith down to kill her.”

And the silence came back down again, like a blanket of dust coating everything in uncomfortable grit. Not that Xal cared—what was a gritty sensation in the air when his chest was on fire?

I never should have gotten involved with them. I should have taken my vessel and disappeared from the hospital, never to be seen again. Eleven months he had spent with them. Nearly a year. I should have burned every bridge and kept to myself. He should have waiting until the fired up the crematorium to sneak away; let them bury some stranger’s ashes and get the closure they needed. Castiel was right: I couldn’t have won against the demons, but if I had just isolated myself, it wouldn’t have mattered. There would have been no one for Lilith to go after once she knew I was close to the Winchesters. It was his fault. It was all his fault. I never should have gotten involved with them.

“Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam!”

Dean glanced up from his coffee just as the onslaught of happy shouting came to an end, cut off by a leap through the air and two arms winding around Xal’s neck.

“You’re home!” the barely teenage boy—Jonah, probably—buried his face in Xal’s shoulder. “I missed you. Why don’t you call more?”

Xal squeezed the little human and then went to put him down. “I’m so—”

“No!” Jonah clung tighter, including his legs in the tangle of limbs encasing Xal’s body. “That was eight seconds. Now we have to wait until twelve.”

Xal immediately straightened up and resumed the embrace. “How could I forget the rule of six?” He tucked his chin over Jonah’s shoulder, and even though he avoided looking at the kitchen window or the hunter leaning back against the wall next to it, Dean could still see the fatigue and guilt. It was a familiar look, after all. Hard not to recognize it.

“That was fourteen.”

“Okay.”

They stood there for four more seconds, and then Xal quickly put the boy down. He held his hands up and took a step back, his face completely changed now that a family member could see it. Neither of them acknowledged what had just happened, and Xal chose to continue the earlier conversation as if there were nothing to acknowledge in the first place. “I’m sorry about not calling. I’ve been really busy.”

“You can’t be busy every second of every day,” was the short reply from the teen in the black sweat jacket who sported that oh-so-familiar shade of brown on his head.

“Jonah,” Carina scolded as she poured what looked like shredded cheese into a large mixing bowl. “Use kinder words. Your brother feels guilty enough as it is.”

Xal waved it off, not really dismissing Carina’s comment but choosing a different approach for himself. “Do you always have the energy to interact with people just because you have the time to? Even people you love?”

Jonah twisted his lips thoughtfully. “No, I don’t.” Beat. “Text me more, though?”

“Sure thing, kiddo.” Xal tousled Jonah’s hair and smiled.

Dean wondered if anyone else could see the bitterness in it.

“Pretzel!” came a new voice, distinctly higher and accompanied by a door slam. “Pretzel, where are you?! Oh, hello strangers in our living room. Where’s Pretzel?”

She must have seen Cas and Sam.

“I’m in here, Livie.”

Bounding into the coffee bar area Carina had made the lattes in earlier, the little ball of pink and blue and light-up sneakers circumvented the bar and shot into the kitchen like a missile. “Prrretzel!”

Xal once again caught his vessel’s younger sibling in a midair hug. “Oh, it’s been so long since I had a Livie Hug!” He squeezed her with obnoxiously loud sound effects, and it was disturbing to Dean how quickly the demon could transition from interacting with a thirteen-year-old to a six-year-old.

I guess he does have centuries of experience, but… It bothered him that Xal could interact with humans so much better than Dean could. No, it doesn’t bother me. Because that made it sound like Dean was the one with the issue; like he felt there was something about himself he needed to fix. It annoys me. Because it was just that Xal was annoying. Dean was not aspiring to achieve any kind of skill a demon had, it was just irritating that a demon had that skill in the first place. That’s what it was. Really.

“Jonie, did you show’im the—”

“Shh!” Jonah quickly shut her up. “Not until six o’ clock!”

Olivia—Dean was pretty sure that was her full name—squirmed in Xal’s arms, whining unhappily. “I don’t wanna wait that long! That’s, like, forever away!”

“It has to be six!” Jonah objected, equally determined to have things his way.

“Okay, okay, calm down everybody. Let’s take a breath.” Xal shifted Olivia to his hip and looked at Jonah. “6:00 PM is 1800 in military time, right?” He waited for a nod. “It’s 4:39 right now. How about we wait until 5:18 to give me my surprise?”

Jonah twisted his lips the same way he had before, squirming in his skin for several seconds before he finally accepted the compromise. “I guess.”

“No!” Olivia whined. “I wanna do it now!”

“Hey,” Xal kept one arm around her waist and used the other to tap her nose. “You want to give me the surprise because it feels good to make me happy, right?”

Olivia nodded, still unhappy. “I’m excited!”

“Are you going to feel good when you make Jonah upset by us messing with his schedule? What about me? Am I going to enjoy my surprise if Jonah is upset?”

“No, but—”

“He’s compromising with you by agreeing to an earlier time.” Xal nodded toward Jonah but kept his eyes on Olivia. “Now you need to compromise back by agreeing to a later time.”

“But that’s not fair! Waiting is stupid!”

Xal leveled a stare at her—Dean almost recoiled from the sheer potency of Older Brother Essence in the look—and said calmly but sternly, “You need to learn to meet the people you love in the middle, Olivia. If you’re not willing to wait until 5:18, then we’re going to wait until 6:00 instead. Do you want that?”

Olivia stared at him, and even though her back was to Dean, he knew there was a lip wobble going on. “No…”

“Okay. Then we’re going to share the surprise at 5:18.” He quickly planted a kiss on her cheek—why did it come so naturally?—and wrapped his free arm back around her. “I know it’s hard to wait, but I know you can be patient. I have full confidence in you.”

Olivia grumbled but leaned into the hug, snuggling up under Xal’s chin. “I guess…”

“What?” Carina exclaimed, grabbing milk from the fridge and bustling back to her bowl. “I can barely keep them from spilling blood, let alone get an ‘I guess’ from both of them!” She laughed. “You have to come home more often, Zen Master Adam.”

“I’ll see what I can do about that,” was the half-laughed, noncommittal answer Xal offered.

Because there was no universe where he could spend more time with the Stallworths. Even if they hadn’t just learned Lilith was specifically targeting them, the mere fact Xal was a demon made his presence dangerous enough that, if he cared about his vessel’s family at all, the best thing he could do for them was stay far, far away. And even to Dean’s skeptical eye, it was pretty obvious Xal cared quite a bit.

“Dean, sweetie, can you grab that second casserole dish?”

“Uh—” Dean set his coffee on the nearby table and moved to the counter, pretending he didn’t get a weird twitch in his neck from the endearing name. He grabbed a very large, dark green dish of casserolish appearance, figuring that was the one she meant. “Here.” He stopped, noting the bowl of casserole batter still in her arms and realizing she wanted him to switch out the full one for the one he had. “Let me just…”

He maneuvered the dishes for her, and as she poured the second half, he realized just how much food she was making. These weren’t those square, half-sized casserole dishes; they were the long, rectangle ones. “You guys sure like to eat.” He almost winced at his words. That was probably rude. Or weird.

See? Why could Xal do it better?

“That’s smart, though.” He cleared his throat. “Lots of leftovers, easy lunches and dinners for the week.” There. That sounded somewhat like normal conversation. Right?

“Oh, we don’t normally eat this much.” Carina set the bowl aside and wiped her hands on her checkered apron. “I doubled the recipe.” She opened a drawer and pulled out a box of tin foil.

Dean frowned. “You doubled…? Oh. Oh, no, we don’t—”

“Hey, Dean, Adam.” Sam poked his head in the room. “We were thinking of going down to the police station to try and get an update.” Which meant they needed to get away from the Stallworths long enough to figure out a game plan.

“It’s only twenty minutes away.” Carina tore a sheet of foil, not looking up from her culinary undertaking. “We normally eat around 6:30, so if you leave now, you should be back in time.”

Sam blinked, having the same revelation Dean had had just a few moments prior. “Oh, we—we don’t want to intrude. There’s plenty of places for us to eat between here and the motel.”

“Nonsense! You’re Adam’s friends. That’s practically the same as family.”

“Mom,” Xal tried, putting Olivia back on her feet. “I told you I was going to take them to the steakhouse up the road—”

“And I told you you were welcome to take them after dinner. It’s bad enough I don’t have the spare room to let you all sleep here; you’re not going to pay for dinner and lodging while you’re home visiting.” Carina once again didn’t look away from what she was doing, and it made a very clear statement: they were doing things her way, and she couldn’t be persuaded, so their objections were pointless and required none of her attention.

“It’s 5:09,” Jonah interjected, adding no context.

“Right, the surprise.” Xal pointed to his brother. “We’ll do the surprise at 5:18, and then we’ll go to the police station.”

“Because Trevor got blown to smithereens?” Jonah asked bluntly.

Dean pursed his lips and gave a sideways nod. You can’t say he guessed wrong.

Sam looked around the kitchen. “I am really… really confused right now.”

“Me, too!” Olivia shouted, throwing her hand up and bouncing on her toes.

Carina commented with a sing-song voice. “If you’re not confused in the Stallworth House, it means you’re certifiably insane. Trust me, it’s better if you don’t understand what’s happening.”

Dean felt a smile pull on his mouth, and he looked at Sam to share a brief moment of things not being awful. Images of Heaven flashed before his eyes, and he kept moving his head, hiding his original intent in the act of retrieving his coffee cup. Should I even still be mad about it? There’s so much going on right now. I should just get over it.

“Hey,” Alyssa poked her head around the wall that kept the front door just out of sight. “Daisy just called me, and she’s not doing well. I think she’s drunk. I’m gonna run to her place and see what I can do.”

“Lyssa, you’re not doing all that well yourself.” Xal gave her a worried look. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

Alyssa laughed and rolled her eyes, drawing Dean’s attention to the distinct lack of redness on her face. “A woman can always be okay if someone else needs her to be.” She tapped her cheeks with two fingers each and blew a kiss. “What do you think waterproof makeup is for?”

“Text me updates, and call if you need support, okay?” Xal clearly wasn’t convinced, and he let it show on his face. “I know Daisy doesn’t know me that well, but…”

“I will. Love ya, dum dum. Jonah, Livie, Mom—hugs and kisses and all the good stuff.” She gave a two-fingered salute and turned on her heel.

Sam watched her leave before turning a raised brow to the kitchen.

“Well,” Xal sighed, “she’s acting more like herself, at least.”

Carina hummed. “The show must go on.”

Castiel meandered into the kitchen just as Sam cautiously spoke. “Wouldn’t it be better to… be not okay with the person who needs her instead of faking it?”

Dean’s face screwed up. “What? That’s the worst thing you can do.”

Sam’s expression fell somewhere between annoyed and incredulous. “What are you talk—?”

Carina’s airy laughter interrupted him. “Boys, boys, boys. There’s no cure-all for suffering. You have to know the person and the situation; sometimes you have to come right out and ask.”

Jonah rolled his eyes. “Not this story again.”

“I remember learning that lesson with Russell,” Carina continued wistfully, as if she hadn’t heard her son’s bemoaning. “It took almost three years of marriage before I finally took him by the face and said, ‘Shut up and listen to me.’”

Jonah mouthed the words in unison with her.

“‘I’m about to tell you something, and when I do, I don’t want your advice. I don’t want you to try and fix anything. I want you to listen, and let me scream and cry and do whatever I need to do, and then hold me until I say you can let go.’ And he was stunned—absolutely incredulous—and said, ‘All this time, that’s all I had to do?’” She laughed, a sound that dissolved into a reminiscent sigh. “By our tenth anniversary, he’d connected certain faces to certain requests, and most of the time, I didn’t even have to tell him what I needed. He just knew.”

Dean tried to keep the suspension of belief off his face. Must be a woman thing. He barely finished the thought when Sam gave his own, very different perspective.

“Huh.” He smiled faintly. “I might have to try that.” And his gaze fell to the floor.

What?

“Adam.”  Jonah tugged on his Xal’s sleeve. “Adam, It’s 5:18. S’prise time.”

Olivia, who had been occupying herself on the floor with a game of ‘How Many Ways Can You Move A Shoe?’ jumped to her feet. “Yaaay!” And she bolted.

“Okay, okay.” Xal uttered a nervous laugh and glanced at Sam. “They have a surprise for me.”

Sam held up his hands and moved his lumbering frame out of the way. “Of course. I wouldn’t want to stand in the way of a surprise.”

Casting a final glance at Carina, Dean pushed off the wall and trailed after the group. What was that supposed to mean? That he should ‘try that?’ What, with me? He clenched his fists at his sides, following the entourage through the foyer, up the stairs, down a hall, and into a bedroom full of sports memorabilia.

Xal chuckled awkwardly. “Uh, why are we in my old room?”

“Because.” Jonah marched up to the closet and threw the doors open.

Dean glanced at Sam, who appeared equally confused, and Castiel just past him, who looked fascinated more than anything.

“Here!” Jonah grabbed a t-shirt on a hanger and walked up to Xal, pausing for effect before quickly whipping it around to show the front.

Beat.

Xal burst into laughter. “Kitten Nuggets?”

Dean leaned forward so he could see the shirt, which did indeed show a box of kitten nuggets, as well as an additional kitten nugget dipped in ketchup.

“This is a great shirt, Jo—”

Jonah unzipped his jacket and pulled the sides apart to reveal the same shirt on himself, lips parted in a beaming smile. “We match!”

Xal dropped to his knees and grabbed the hem, looking up at his vessel’s little brother with something like awe on his face. “You got one, too?” He turned his head. “Livie—where is she?”

“Taaadaaaaaa!” the girl yelled—almost like a battle cry—as she came flying through the open doorway wearing her own replica.

Xal laughed again, catching her in his arms. “Oof! You’re drowning in it!”

Jonah shuffled closer, clearly wanting his own embrace. “They only had adult sizes.”

“You guys.” Xal pulled Jonah to the floor with him, one arm wrapped around the teen’s shoulders while the other kept Olivia perched on his lap. “I love you so much.”

Olivia shouted despite being right by his ear. “Love you, toooo!”

“I’m sorry.” Xal pressed his cheek to Jonah’s forehead, like planting a kiss without letting his lips make contact.

“Huh?” Jonah asked.

But Xal only shook his head. “I’m just sorry.”

Olivia squirmed closer, uncoordinated limbs trying to grab on. “We forgive you,” she sang.

“We don’t even know what he’s sorry for,” Jonah muttered, giving her a look like she was stupid.

“That dooon’t matter,” was her equally melodic response.

For a moment, there was quiet, and a crawling sensation started under Dean’s skin, steadily increasing until Jonah bluntly broke the stillness.

“You know if you hold me longer than 66 seconds, you have to hold me for six minutes, right?”

Xal responded sincerely, not a hint of teasing in his voice. “I’ll gladly hold you for six minutes, kiddo. Any day, anytime, anywhere.”

Dean looked at Sam with determination on his face, and he found himself staring into a mirror. Strangely, despite the growing conflict and distance between them, in that moment, they were in full agreement, and a single thought passed between them.

We have to do something about Lilith.

And they had to do it now.

Chapter Text

“Well, this is unexpected.”

Sam shoved his hands into his pockets, refusing the urge to look over his shoulder and confirm for the tenth time that neither Dean nor Castiel were there.

“When your call came in, I told Lilith I would take it myself and try to figure out what you wanted, meaning you better have a good lie prepared to cover up whatever you’re actually about to ask.” Crowley sneered lazily—a sneer too disinterested and aloof to really make an effort—and spread his hands.

“What is Lilith doing to Xal’s family?” Sam saw no reason not to get to the point.

Crowley lifted a brow. “You summoned me… for that?”

“Does she have someone stationed here, in Aurora? Or was this a one-off?” Sam kept his distance from the center of the crossroads, but Dean would have said he was still too close.

“And answering that question helps me how?”

Sam shot back his pre-prepared answer, having known that question was coming. “Because if we don’t know what the threat level is here, we’re going to be diverting part of our attention to watching this place instead of focusing on finding and killing Lilith like you want us to.”

Pursing his lips, Crowley offered a sideways nod. “Fair. Your answer is no, Moose; there isn’t someone stationed here, watching their every move. But that doesn’t mean she won’t hurt the Stallworths again. It’s not difficult for a demon to make the trip here on her orders and commit another ‘one-off.’” He waited a beat. “Meaning there is no way to prevent it. Meaning you shouldn’t be hyper-focused on the family of your pet’s vessel. You should—”

“He’s not our pet.” Sam interrupted sharply, leaving no room for argument. “He’s one of us.”

Crowley hummed. “I have to say, I’ve been watching the brat for quite a while, and I know what he looks like among friends. What I saw when we met last time wasn’t it.”

“We made a mistake, okay? But we’re not going to do it again—"

“So says you,” Crowley quipped with a shrug.

“—and he’s going to figure that out.” Sam shook his head, realizing he had gotten sidetracked. “Look, it doesn’t matter. The Stallworths are human, and they don’t deserve this. None of the people around them do, either, so how do we keep them safe?”

Crowley slipped his hands into his pockets, wearing an incredulous expression. “You don’t. What part of that escapes you? I thought you had learned by now that the real world doesn’t work like Sunday School. You can’t pray a ‘hedge of protection’ around people and expect them to be magically safe from harm.” He lifted one hand toward the open night air, not really indicating anything specific. “Hunt Lilith, kill Lilith, and then she can’t hurt your shelter cat’s forever family.”

“Wow, that’s helpful.” Sam snorted derisively and rolled his eyes. “Fine.” He folded his arms, keeping his hands close to the demon-killing knife in his jacket. “You don’t need to lie about why I called you here. I wanted to know if Lilith was after Xal’s family, I figured a crossroads demon was the best way to find out, so I summoned one and got you without realizing who you are. Plain and simple.” He turned to go but had a thought at the last second. “And stop talking about Xal like he’s an animal.”

“Your feedback has been received, and when I disregard it, I will do so with very careful thought and consideration.” Crowley sighed dramatically, and Sam knew he was being over-the-top just to irritate the hunter.

Sam glared. “I’m not going to let you hurt him more than you already have.”

“Why would I?” Crowley shrugged. “You and the squirrel seem to be managing just fine on your own.”

Sam felt a mix of guilt and anger swirling in his gut. “It was one time, and—”

“Would you trust Ruby again?” Crowley’s voice was dry, a smirk on his lips.

“That was completely different.” Sam wished he could have said it a little stronger, but his voice wouldn’t let him. “She intentionally manipulated me. What happened to Xal was an accident, and we aren’t going to make the same mistake twice.”

Crowley chuckled, the sound bubbling up so suddenly Sam thought perhaps it wasn’t intentional; the demon actually found the statement amusing and couldn’t help himself. “‘We aren’t going to make the same mistake twice,’ you say as you stand here, working with a demon behind your brother’s back. Because that went so well last time.” He laughed again. “Maybe I was wrong; maybe you would trust Ruby again. And that’s why you think Xael should trust you.” He shook his head, an almost pitying expression crossing his face before he shrugged it off. “Have a good night, Samantha, and don’t call again unless it’s a real emergency. Cheers.”

Sam was still thinking of a retort when Crowley vanished, leaving him alone at a crossroads under the early evening sky. I’m not ‘working with a demon’ behind Dean’s back. I just called Crowley for some insight. Feeling a little sick, Sam looked back toward the edge of the town. He had told Dean and Xal he was going to wander the area and see if he could find anything suspicious, and given how long he had been away, he figured it was best to either jog or briskly walk at least half of the return trip. I should get going.

Heaving a sigh, Sam turned his back on the intersection and slipped into something almost resembling a run. It’s totally different. Ruby was evil, and she was good to me for the sole purpose of convincing me to do something wrong. It was cold and calculated; Dean and Castiel and I, we just… made a mistake under pressure. It wasn’t planned out, it wasn’t… His pace slowed to a fast walk, the hot, muggy air clinging to his face. But I guess Xal doesn’t know us that well. Still, it wasn’t as if they planned to have the demons show up when and where they did, so Xal couldn’t think they had been manipulating him for the sole purpose of leaving him in that barn. It’s different. Sam shook his head and returned to a jog.

It was totally different.

Lyssa she’s really not doing well

You Do you need me to come help?

Lyssa no it’s okay… I just wish I could make it better

You I know. Let me know if anything changes.

You And let me know if anything weird happens.

You I’m not trying to scare you, I’m just on edge right now. K?

Lyssa YOURE weird. and I know. thanks bab ily

Xal exhaled hard and snapped his phone shut, shoving it into his pocket. It had been four minutes since Alyssa sent her last text, and he knew that was entirely too short of a time for him to be stressed about it, but his anxiety didn’t really seem to care.

“Pretzel?”

Smiling instinctively, Xal looked down at the owner of the little hands tugging on his shirt. “Yes, Miss Livie Loo?” He leaned down and hoisted her up into his arms.

“You look sad.” Olivia grabbed his face, twisting her lips as she searched his eyes far more perceptively than a six-year-old should have been able to. “Why?”

Xal simply flashed another smile. “Being a grown-up sucks. Stay young forever, okay?”

But she didn’t laugh. “You’re wearing the face.”

Xal tensed. “Wearing what face?”

“The face you wear when we ask about Adam.” Olivia grabbed his cheeks and squeezed them.

Xal tried to fend off the seriousness by puffing up those cheeks against her hands. She caught me. And he knew she caught him because Olivia very rarely spoke about the fact she knew her brother was dead. She had never told anyone about how she heard Adam’s voice outside her window many times while he was supposed to be in the hospital, and she never told anyone about how, when she asked a recently-revived Adam about it, he realized it was a nalusa falaya who had wandered too far north and wanted to lure her outside and eat her. She definitely never told anyone about the night it nearly succeeded and what she saw him do to it.

Xal blew her hair back when she ‘popped’ his cheeks, pulling a giggle from her lips. “Livie… there’s a lot you don’t know.” He kissed her forehead. “And I know there’s also a lot you do know. Including some things you probably shouldn’t. But…” He held her tighter. “I won’t lie and say there’s nothing scary going on, but it’s just another monster. I took care of the last one, and I’ll take  care of this one.” He kissed her nose.

Olivia tilted her head. “But you’re sad.”

“Nah, I’m just tired.” He smirked. “Old and tired.”

She didn’t look convinced. “Pretzel.” Because it rhymed with Xochiquetzal. And he didn’t know why, but it meant so much to him that she had come up with a nickname for him rather than the skin he was wearing. “I will eat you if you’re fibbing me.”

“Well, guess what?” Xal waited for her to process the question, and then his lips split in a wicked grin. “I’m gonna eat’cha no matter what you do!” He lifted her up and started loudly and dramatically ‘eating’ her tummy, squeals and laughter filling the air as she wriggled in his arms.

“Adam, I can see Sam coming up the road!”  Carina’s voice floated out from the kitchen followed by a good-natured tease. “I told you he was fine!”

Xal turned toward the foyer and shifted Olivia onto his hip instinctively. Amazing how some instincts remained no matter what body he was in. From carrying the little ones running the streets of Sumeria in 2500 BC, all the way to babysitting the neighbor’s kids every Saturday in 1974, he was naturally drawn to and protective of kids. It was one of the few threads that remained in every single incarnation—even the one of himself that thrived in the Pit. Over the years, he had come to the conclusion it was probably because he so desperately wished someone had protected him as a child.

“Hey, Sam,” Xal greeted as he opened the door. “Did you have a good walk?” By which he meant, did Sam see anything suspicious or noteworthy while patrolling the town.

Sam offered a weak smile. “Yeah, it was a good walk.” Which meant no, there wasn’t anything suspicious. So why did Sam look less-than-happy about it?

“Livie, I think it’s about time you got your teeth brushed and your PJs on.”

“But it’s a special encasion! Your friends are here, so I can stay up late!” Olivia objected.

Xal shook his head in rhythm with the next three words. “No, no, no. You get an A for effort, but my friends and I aren’t staying here. We’re staying at a motel, and we’re going to leave very soon, so you need to get your butt to bed.” He leaned over, plopping her on her feet and pointing to the staircase to the second story. “Hop to it.”

Twisting her lips and crinkling her nose, she spent a moment giving him an unhappy scowl, and then she turned on her heel… and hopped away like a bunny. Xal couldn’t help but laugh, rolling his eyes with, “You’re a riot, Livie.” He turned back toward Sam and lowered his voice. “Nothing at all?”

Sam shook his head, still wearing that face that wasn’t quite upset, but wasn’t quite happy, and was just discouraged enough to not be neutral. “Nothing.”

I should press. Xal immediately shot down his own question. Don’t get comfortable again. You have a pact with Castiel, and that’s it. He decided to nod, taking the information without indicating his thoughts one way or another. “I think Dean is in the kitchen with Mom, and Castiel is doing a walkthrough of the house to see if anything has a supernatural energy to it.” He indicated the door. “I already picked the motel and called ahead to confirm they have vacancy. It’s the closest to Alyssa’s friend, just in case something happens.”

Sam didn’t respond right away, just watching Xal’s face in solemn silence before he smiled. “You didn’t even realize, did you?”

Xal tensed. What?

“You called Carina ‘Mom’ even though it’s just us and we both know you’re not really Adam.” Sam didn’t seem upset, and his smile lingered, but he was still off. “It’s a good thing, not a criticism. It’s…” He rubbed his forehead with a sigh. “I don’t know what it is.”

Something is wrong. Xal gave a hesitant smile, not really knowing what he was supposed to say to that. Should I ask him? Or keep my distance? Or ma—

“Hey,” Dean started, coming out of the kitchen with a small cooler in his arms. “I think Carina is willing to let us leave now that we have a miniature kitchen to sustain us for the whole twelve hours tops we’re going to be away from her.”

Xal chuckled softly. “Yeah, that sounds about right.” He stepped around Dean and moved toward the stairs. “I want to say goodbye to Jonah, and I think Castiel is still investigating upstairs, so…” He didn’t wait for a reply and took the steps two at a time before making his way down the hall toward Jonah’s room.

“…rare, but I managed to find one. This… is my climaciella brunnea.”

“Also known as the Brown Mantidfly.” Castiel was nodding solemnly when Xal rounded the corner, kneeling next to Jonah on the floor in front of one of Jonah’s many dressers. “It is well-preserved. You can see the mantis-like appendages very clearly, and there isn’t a single sign of deterioration.”

Dean’s voice came from behind, utterly perplexed. “Cas… what are you doing?”

Castiel didn’t look away from the small, glass case. “Jonah is introducing me to his expansive collection of winged insects. It is magnificent.” But he kept his hands in his lap and didn’t get too close to the bugs he was being shown. Xal had to wonder if he lacked a desire to touch, or if he was simply respecting Jonah’s very strict no-touching policy.

“Do you have to go?” Jonah also didn’t look away from the mantidfly.

“Just for now,” Xal assured. “We’ll be back tomorrow.”

“What time?”

“Uhh… I don’t know. It kind of depen—”

“Can you come at six?”

Dean snapped a quick and decisive, “I am not getting up that early,” from behind. “I will do 7:06 at the absolute earliest.”

“7:16,” was Jonah’s immediate reply.

Xal tossed an explanation over his shoulder. “Because one plus six is seven.” Then, to Jonah, “If we can’t get here by then, I’ll text you so you can prepare for the change, okay?”

Jonah nodded and started putting his treasure away without so much as a sideways glance toward his new friend. “Goodbye, Castiel. I like you.”

Castiel got up and made a beeline for the hall, giving his response without even looking at the boy. “Goodbye, Jonah. I like you, too. I am anticipating an impressive Banded Pennant tomorrow.”

“I only have impressive specimens.” Jonah carefully closed the drawer. “Bye, Adam. Love you.”

Xal smiled fondly. “Bye, Jonah. Love you, too.” He shook his head and turned around to follow the Winchesters into the hall.

“That… was the most amazing thing I’ve ever witnessed,” Sam whispered.

“I know we haven’t known Cas that long, but would you ever peg him as a bug collector?” Dean whispered back. “What, in between smiting towns with Uriel, he would just chill in a marsh?”

Xal smirked to himself. I absolutely would have pegged him as a bug collector. But then again, Castiel and Xal had more similarities. Even if Xal better understood how to blend in to whatever environment he stumbled across, he understood being an ancient and out-of-place soul. Jonah could be good for Castiel. But the train of thought immediately soured by the reality of the current predicament. Me being around them already put them in danger. Forming a bond with an angel is only going to endanger them more. But could he stop Castiel from doing what he wanted? Maybe if I just talk to him about it… he did say he wants to be friends… But was it even his place to ask that of Castiel? And what about Jonah? He had little to no friends—that was why his first exclamation upon seeing his brother was about the lack of texting between them—and Castiel seemed to click with him. Why does this all have to be so complicated?

Dean grabbed the utility door at the top of the stairwell, throwing it open with an exaggerated grunt accompanied by the clanging glass in the case dangling from his hand. He marched around the brick structure on the motel roof, a bit of a swagger to his step as he approached the demon sitting on the cement. Meeting the blue-gray eyes with a bit of a threat in his own, Dean went past Xal and dropped to the ground, planting the 24-pack between them.

“Do you need something from me?” Xal asked quietly, smoothly catching the ball of white fur tumbling over the edge of his hand.

Dean shifted against the wall, stretching his legs out in front of him, and opened the box. “Nope.” He pulled out a beer for himself and then grabbed another and held it out.

Xal looked at him with weary eyes. “What do you want, Dean?”

“Right now? For you to take this beer.” Dean didn’t move.

Closing his eyes with a soft exhale, Xal grabbed the beer and all but dropped it to the ground beside him, his hands returning to grab Drysdusa as she clambered over his legs toward another fall. “Now what?”

“I dunno.” Dean shrugged and tossed his bottlecap across the roof, not realizing Drysdusa might like to play with it until it had already left his hand. “Talk. Scream and shout and let it all out.”

Xal snarled, baring his teeth. “Why, of all people, would I do that with you?” He froze with a choked sound, and then quickly shrank back. “I’m sorry. I just don’t want to talk. Okay?”

Rolling his eyes, Dean ignored the latter statement and looked out at the small-town city lights. “I’m the only one you should do this with. You don’t wanna disappoint Sam or fall off this weird line you’ve been walking between ‘yay, we’re friends’ and ‘eep, you’re scary.’ You definitely don’t wanna risk your…” he waved his hand, not bothering to hide his disgust, “…budding friendship with Cas, but me? I’m gonna distrust and dislike you no matter what. You can’t say the ‘wrong’ thing to me. So have at it, Hellcat.”

Xal didn’t say anything, but Dean kept his gaze dead ahead, so he didn’t know if there was a facial expression to be read. He heard Drysdusa mew quietly, and he heard Xal’s clothes rustle.

“What is there to say?”

“Nothing, maybe.” Dean took a swig from his bottle and fought the urge to smirk when he heard the seal on Xal’s break. “But you’re sitting on a roof in the middle of the night staring moodily into the distance, so…” He bent one leg so he could rest his arm on the knee, getting comfortable.

Once again, there was silence. Dean watched a bird dart across the sky. Xal’s boots shifted against the gritty rooftop. Metal scraped lightly against the cement, making Dean think Xal had realized the same thing Dean had earlier and gave the kitten his bottlecap to play with. Overhead, a yellow light was humming as it illuminated a metal box nearby; the maintenance of which was probably the only reason there was access to the roof in the first place.

Xal took a drink, and even though it only lasted about twenty seconds, the bottle was empty when he slammed it down beside him, green glass shattering outward. “I should have left.” He grabbed another bottle, boot scraping again. “I shouldn’t have waited until they pulled the plug. I should have taken the body, been satisfied with him being braindead instead of actually dead, and I should have vanished from the hospital without a trace.”

“So why didn’t you?” Dean’s voice was rough, but he wasn’t angry. Not consciously, anyway. It was probably just his feelings about Sam and the helpless frustration of trying to prevent the end of the world coming up his throat.

“Because I’m a coward.” Xal scoffed, moving in Dean’s peripherals just before Drysdusa let out a loud meow of protest. “Always have been.”

Scowling, Dean tapped his bottle against his leg. “Yeah.” He scanned the sky, wishing there were stars to keep his eyes busy. “You tend to bend over and take it from whoever packs the biggest punch. But how does that have anything to do with schmoozing your vessel’s family?”

Once again, the demon lapsed into wordlessness. Dean gradually finished his beer and tossed it to his right, immediately going for another. Xal finished his second one and moved on to his third, and if it weren’t for the circumstances, Dean might have taken that as a challenge.

“I’m afraid to be alone.”

Dean actually stopped, bottle hovering inches from his lips. I wasn’t expecting that. He squinted, vaguely aware Drysdusa had wandered over and was clawing his jeans.

“Every time I get out… every single time…” Xal laughed bitterly, his voice thick. “I always find someone. Or someones. I don’t want to go back to Hell, so I can’t be around supernatural creatures; it’s a surefire way to cross paths with the people best equipped to send you back.”

That makes sense, at least. On day one, Xal had shown that his primary motivation for anything he did—the reason he even took the deal Sam offered—was avoiding Hell at all costs.

“When I got out of Hell the first several times, there weren’t hunters. It wasn’t until… psh, mid-1400s, I think, that I encountered anyone who saw magic as a bad thing, and it went downhill from there.” Xal cleared his throat. “All I’ve had for the last five centuries is normal, everyday humans. And it worked, and I liked it.” Glass shattered again, and Dean had to assume it was another bottle. “But I knew. I only got out because the Hell Gate had been opened. Obviously, big things were happening. I didn’t know what, but… I knew. And I integrated myself into the Stallworth family anyway. Because I didn’t want to be alone. Because I’m terrified of being alone, and I’m too much of a coward to put anyone else before that fear. And now they get to suffer for it.”

Dean nodded on a loop, less of an agreement and more of an idle animation while he processed. Eventually, the nodding faded, but he hadn’t really had a coherent thought or figured out what he wanted to say. They each went through another bottle, an occasional curse letting Xal know his emotional support kitten was scratching up Dean’s side as she climbed his torso, and then they each drank another. Dean got up and walked around the corner with a muttered, “Gotta take a leak,” which he did. No, he did not carry the kitten with him. No, it was not because she had earned her place on his shoulder after all the hard work she did to get there. He came back then, grabbed another drink, and started to notice Xal broke every bottle he emptied by slamming it down beside himself. Maybe that was why he hadn’t tried to get Drysdusa back. Seven, eight, nine… not like Dean thought Xal would get drunk. His messy meltdown after the Incident had proven that.

“He is on at least twenty times the amount a human can tolerate. Of three different substances. He is also drunk. Oh, I apologize. There are three substances he has exceeded the lethal limit of twentyfold. He is on two additional substances in addition to that, but those amounts are not nearly as lethal.”

Smirking but not quite managing a laugh, Dean slouched against the brick wall. He really did mess himself up that night. Why, Dean didn’t know, especially considering his current response. His human family getting attacked by Lilith is way worse than a fight with some demons and some abandonment issues.

Dean cupped his hand around the kitten on his shoulder, pulling her a little closer and taking a shallow breath. “Well, if every other time you got tangled up with normal people, they didn’t get hunted by the Queen of Hell because you were working with two infamous hunters and an angel rebel,” he shrugged, “kinda makes sense your brain wouldn’t immediately go there.” He frowned. “Wait. You didn’t have a brain then. You were just black smoke. Your… consciousness?”

Xal didn’t say anything. Drysdusa was purring against Dean’s neck.

“They seem to like you. Especially the kids.” Dean ran his thumb against the soft, white fur. “Even with a dead ex, they don’t seem too traumatized. And letting everything show like this is only going to tell Lilith how effective screwing with your family can be.” He looked at Xal, forgetting what he intended to say the second he saw how torn up Xal’s hand was.

Xal didn’t seem to notice, draining the last of the case and slamming the bottle down just as forcefully as all the others, an action Dean now realized was sending shards of glass into the demon’s hand and wrist.

“What are you, emo?” Dean grabbed Drysdusa and got to his feet, wondering how much of an alcoholic he had to be for eight beers in an hour to leave him utterly unaffected. “Come on.”

Xal stared at the torn flesh vacantly, and for all he had shared, it was obvious there was so much more that he hadn’t. “I’m just gonna sit here for a while. Can you ta—?”

“Yeah, I wasn’t asking.” Dean grabbed Xal’s upper arm and yanked him to his feet without waiting for a response. “You’re lucky you only cut up your hand.” For the most part. “Tattoos are friggin’ expensive.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’ll take care of it later.” But Xal didn’t object to Dean gripping his arm and urging him down the stairs. “Just give me Drysdusa.”

“Sorry, I though you knew our positions.” Dean didn’t let him go, even when they got to the ground level, though he didn’t really know why. Especially because he was cradling Drysdusa to his chest with his other hand, so he was going to have to let go of something soon. “I make the rules in this outfit, Hellcat.”

Xal offered a quiet, “Yes, sir,” and Dean couldn’t figure out what kind of voice it was. It wasn’t submissive or fearful, but it wasn’t a weary agreeance, either. It just was. Very flat. Very…

“Backseat,” Dean ordered, releasing Xal only to fish the Impala’s keys from his pocket.

Xal did as he was told, and Dean got the first aid kit from the trunk before sliding into the back. He plopped Drysdusa on the parcel shelf, figuring the floor was too dangerous for something that small, and opened the plastic kit. He grabbed the small flashlight inside and handed it over, figuring Xal would know what to do with it, and then found the tweezers by touch before Xal could even turn on the light and hold it overhead.

“Give me your hand.”

Xal obeyed, lifting his head and almost making eye contact before his gaze dropped back down. Dean grasped the hand and got to work, pulling out the shards of glass in all their varying sizes and depth of penetration. Every now and then, he would have to shoo Drysdusa back toward the rear windshield so she didn’t fall down into the medical supplies between him and his… idiot, he guessed.

“What are you gonna tell your mom tomorrow, huh?” Dean heaved an irritated sigh, pulling out a particularly deep triangle but getting no response. “She’s gonna wonder why your hand is all cut up. It’s gonna upset her and your siblings.” He grabbed a cloth and wiped away the excess blood.

“They’re not mine. They’re Adam’s.”

Dean snorted. “Sure.” He turned Drysdusa around again.

“If they knew—”

“I know what I saw today. Don’t tell me I don’t.”

It got quiet again, and after about a minute, Dean started humming. It wasn’t Hey Jude—that was sacred ground—but it was slow and soothing without getting too friendly. He muttered occasional lyrics in between the stretches of melody, no longer needing to look at Drysdusa to know when and where she was about to tumble over the edge. He cleaned and carefully wrapped the hand, settling for band-aids on the fingertips and smears of antibiotic ointment on the scratches over the wrist and forearm.

“Good enough.” Dean cleaned up quickly, though with less care than Sam would have liked, and then backed out of the car. “Get your cat, and go to bed.”

Xal met Dean at the back of the Impala, holding a very happy kitten to his sternum with both hands. “I don’t need sleep. I was actually planning on going to Alyssa’s friend’s house to keep an eye on things, but I got distracted.”

That’s one word for it. Dean kept that thought to himself and offered an unimpressed eyebrow raise instead. “Who makes the rules in this outfit, Hellcat?”

Xal opened his mouth, probably to argue.

“Do you need me to remind you?” Dean challenged, towering over the demon. “Do we need to have a little chat about who’s in charge?”

“…no, sir.”

“Didn’t think so.” Dean once again grabbed Xal by the arm and half shoved, half hauled him across the parking lot. And right about the time they entered the motel room, Dean realized why he kept grabbing Xal when it wasn’t necessary: because John had done it to him.

For all John put on Dean’s shoulders, he seemed to understand what the weight meant more than anyone else in Dean’s life. John had pounded into Dean’s head that Sam had to be protected and the hunt trumped all. But John had also pounded into Dean’s head that Dean had to follow John’s orders without question. When Dean was left to his own devices, he didn’t take care of himself because Sam and hunting came first. When Dean was left with other caretakers, like Bobby, they would try to give him the freedom they felt he should have had… which meant Dean didn’t take care of himself because Sam and hunting came first.

But John would say, “I won’t be back until three or four in the morning. Sammy needs to be in bed by nine. And Dean?” And he would take Dean’s chin in his hand and give him a look that meant a trip over John’s knee was waiting at the end of any disobedience. “You better not stay up past ten.”

And Dean could crawl into bed at ten and pass out, guilt free. If John gave Dean control, Dean would stay up the entire time John was gone, faithfully watching over his brother to ensure nothing went wrong. But when John ordered him to go to bed, well… he had to. Orders were not to be questioned under any circumstances.

Was it a solution to a problem some would say John created in the first place? Maybe.

Was it healthy or good for Dean to function like that? Probably not.

But it was how he functioned, regardless. It was something no one ever understood about him; criticized him for, even. It was something John did less and less as Dean got older, leaving Dean to wonder what he had done wrong and how he could get that clearly defined structure back. So when Dean saw Xal pushing himself to the limit, he knew there was a bone-deep guilt and fear of failure driving it. Sam wouldn’t force Xal to stop, wanting to treat him like a friend, wanting to give him the independence Sam himself had always craved.

Dean was not Sam. Dean was John.

And Xal was not Dean’s friend. Xal was Dean’s soldier.

“There’s only two beds, and Sam is already asleep.” Xal tugged on his arm, but Dean didn’t even consider letting go. “You need sleep more than I do. I’m a demon. Just—”

Dean shoved him onto the mattress. “I’m not going to tell you again.” He cracked his neck and sat on the edge of the bed himself, leaning down to unlace his boots. “And if I do have to tell you again,” he tossed one boot aside, “you’re not going to like what comes with it.”

Xal had to be angry—had to be glaring—but by the time Dean was making himself comfortable on the side closest to the door, an almost sheepish, “Yes, sir,” came from his right, and Xal curled up a second later.

He didn’t even take his shoes off. Dean rolled his eyes, and he definitely didn’t lean closer to ensure Drysdusa wasn’t trapped by the position Xal was in. He turned off the bedside light and closed his eyes, directing his order-giving voice inward despite the fact it wouldn’t give him the permission his dad’s voice always had. You need sleep, Dean. Go to bed, or you’ll regret it later.

And he closed his eyes.

“I have questions.”

Castiel blinked, pulling himself from his thoughts and looking to his left, where Jonah Stallworth had just plopped himself down on the top step of the back deck. “I am in the same… boat.” He was pretty sure that was right. “I have been thinking for the past two hours, but I haven’t come up with any answers to the questions I have.”

“I have questions for you,” Jonah clarified, hands in his lap and blue-gray eyes peering up at the angel. “Adam isn’t Adam.”

Castiel waited. “That is not a question.”

Jonah ignored him and put his eyes on the backyard, continuing with more statements instead of the questions he claimed to have. “Alyssa said you called him by a demon name because you have a fixation on demonology. That’s a lie.” He didn’t give the angel a chance to disagree, plowing ahead. “I knew Adam wasn’t Adam thirteen days after he came home from the hospital. He typed on his computer fast, and he didn’t look. Adam had to poke the keys one by one. Brain injuries change personality or tastes or memories, but it doesn’t give you skills you didn’t have before.”

Castiel opened his mouth to correct the statement, but Jonah cut him off.

“I’m referring to statistical probabilities as absolutes to make this more concise.”

Castiel nodded. As long as Jonah understood there were slim possibilities for some of what he was saying, Castiel saw no reason to correct him, as he was making statements that adhered to all the most likely scenarios.

“His miraculous recovery plus the appearance of sudden abilities equals an unnatural event. Olivia gave him a new nickname—which neither of them could explain the origin of—twenty-seven days after Adam came home from the hospital. Two days before, Olivia touched Adam’s face as many as five times in ten minutes.” Jonah barely took time to breathe as the body of evidence fell from his tongue, and it was clear he had no reservations or hesitations about what he was saying. Even if Adam were himself, Castiel would not have been able to convince Jonah of it. “I believe she was subconsciously confirming he was real. It was because she knew he wasn’t really Adam, and her brain was trying to reconcile what she saw with what she knew.”

Castiel wondered if his intense and unwavering stare was appropriate, considering Jonah had put his attention on the yard, but Castiel had known many humans who prioritized eye contact, so he maintained his gaze. It felt right.

“Adam left before I could decide what he was, so I had to use my memories and the conversations I would have with him over the phone. On November 15^th, 2007, at 6:49 PM, we were texting, and he said, ‘Back in my day, we didn’t even have personal computers, and now you can carry one in your backpack!’” Jonah tapped the back of his middle, left knuckle with his right thumb, and even though there was no excitement on his face, the longer he talked, the faster he tapped. “In 2000, roughly half of all American homes had personal computers. If he had said personal computers were rare or unusual, it would be plausible, because Adam was born in 1988. But we are affluent. I also looked through our photo albums and found photographic evidence we had a personal computer in 1998 when Adam was ten.”

Castiel nodded solemnly. This is well researched.

“Saying people ‘didn’t even have personal computers’ when he was a kid doesn’t indicate an inability to remember his past; it indicates a specific, factually incorrect memory of his past. I concluded his lack of familiarity with modern things like cellphones and CD players was probably coming from similarly incorrect memories instead of memory loss.” Jonah’s thumb was all but spasming, blurred by the speed of the tapping. “I looked for alternate theories and found many supernatural ones. Based on my information, a shapeshifter was most likely, but I switched the stainless steel utensils out for silver ones last night, and Adam didn’t react. So it can’t be a shapeshifter.” He turned his head toward Castiel, but he was still looking at the yard. Just more in Castiel’s direction than before. “Alyssa said I should talk to you about my fascination with the supernatural—which is not fascination but investigation—because you used a name for Adam that he explained with your fixation on demonology.” He looked Castiel in the eye, meeting the unblinking stare that had observed him from the moment he sat down. “What is my brother?”

“Adam is dead.” Castiel didn’t even hesitate. He couldn’t refute the evidence presented, and if Jonah had come this far, he deserved an honest answer. “He was possessed by a demon named Xochiquetzal, which appeared to be a miraculous recovery. Xochiquetzal has not inhabited a body since the 1970s, hence his lacking knowledge of more recent decades.”

Jonah stared at Castiel for a long moment. His tapping stopped. He got very, very still and stopped breathing. He spent a moment frozen, and then his eyes started flickering from left to right, as if reading something in front of him.

“Jonah—”

“And Adam can’t come back?”

Castiel was mildly confused. “No. He is dead.”

Jonah stared for a beat, nodded sharply, and faced forward. He resumed his tapping and reading of invisible words despite nothing but a birth bath and garden being in front of him. “He came back because Alyssa called. But Alyssa would have been fine if he didn’t.” He paused. “Trevor was killed by something else that isn’t human, and that’s why you’re here.”

“Yes. We are currently—”

“Cas!”

Castiel looked over his shoulder at an incredulous Dean in the doorway.

“Did you just tell him yes?” Then, before Castiel could even answer, “Why did you tell him yes?”

“He made a statement, but there was an implied element of questioning,” Castiel explained.

“I meant why did you—” Dean held up his hands. “Never mind.” He looked at Jonah. “Kid, just ignore him. Whoever killed Trevor was definitely hu—”

“You missed the part where he told me Adam is possessed by a demon named Xochiquetzal.” Jonah continued tapping his knuckle, his voice and expression flat.

Dean looked at Castiel, murder written clearly in his eyes—and for Castiel to read anything in anyone’s eyes, it had to be a very clear message. “Cas, you can’t just…” he gestured toward the house nondescriptly, “…tell all them that Adam isn’t Adam anymore. You—”

“His argument was well-structured, and his evidence impeccable. I saw no reason to lie, and he had already made up his mind regardless.” Castiel glanced at Jonah, a faint smile pulling on the corner of his mouth. Were he still in charge of battalions, he would have wanted Jonah to accept the grace of an angel and join his forces. “He could not have been deceived even if I attempted.”

Dean gestured some more, making disjointed noises of confusion before he finally buried his face in his hands with a groan. “Great. We got a tween with forbidden knowledge.” He looked at Jonah, clearly displeased, but Jonah still wasn’t looking at him. “Have you told your brother? I mean, the demon? Xal?”

Jonah did turn to look at him then, eyes brimming with a combination of confusion and Are You An Idiot. “I confirmed my suspicions seven minutes before you came out here. When would I have told Adam?” His brow twitched when he said the name.

“He didn’t know you were suspicious, then?” Dean chose to ignore the immense judgment and focus on his questions. “You didn’t ask him anything or try to get answers directly?”

“That would have been a really stupid thing to do.” Jonah blinked. “So no.”

Dean lifted his hands and opened his mouth but stopped, holding the position for a moment before he dropped his hands. “Okay, you know what? That’s fine. Everything’s fine. Let me get Sam and the hellcat, and—”

“Alyssa will find that suspicious, even if Mom won’t notice.” Jonah stood up and faced the house, dusting off his shirt three times and then doing the same to his pants. “I notice everything, though. You can leave. If anything happens out of the ordinary, I can text you. I will also keep a log of behavior and observe patterns.” He smiled to himself then, gaze drifting to the side as he seemed to get lost in thought.

Fantasizing about a thorough investigation, no doubt. Castiel fully understood that. Few things were as enjoyable as collecting, identifying, organizing, and interpreting evidence.

“You…” Dean sighed. “You have to—”

“Hey!” Xochiquetzal leaned out of the house and announced, “Mom says lunch is gonna be ready in six minutes.” He almost ducked back inside after that, but he must have noticed something that stopped him short. “What’s wrong?”

Dean rubbed the back of his neck, gesturing vaguely toward Jonah. “He knows you’re not Adam. And he knows something supernatural is after your family.”

Xochiquetzal didn’t move, frozen in place, but Castiel could hear the artificial heart rate and temperature of the energy in his vessel rising. He made miniscule movements with his lips, trying to speak but struggling to do much of anything, let alone form words.

“Castiel says he’s dead,” Jonah said flatly, keeping his distance but bearing no emotion on his face that might indicate how he felt about the situation. “And you’re Xochiquetzal. I understand the nickname Olivia gave you now.”

Dean frowned, looking at Xochiquetzal. “The tyke knows, too?”

Xochiquetzal didn’t acknowledge him, taking a shallow breath and wetting his lips before he very carefully started to speak. “I’m… sorry about your brother. And I hope… you understand why I didn’t tell you.”

“It was the logical thing to do,” was the simple response.

That was Castiel’s thought as well, but Xochiquetzal didn’t seem satisfied with that, and his lips pulled into a sad kind of smile as he said, “It was logical. But I’m sure it hurt, too.”

Jonah stared blankly, offering nothing.

“I can see the fabric on the top of your right sneaker moving.” Xochiquetzal pointed. “It’s because you’re curling and uncurling your toes inside the shoe. You do it when you’re trying not to cry.” He knelt down, resting his hands in his lap and peering up at the boy who was now taller than him. “I’m sorry, Jonah. I made the best choice I could, but sometimes the best choice is a sucky, awful, painful one.”

Castiel’s eyes drifted to the sneaker, and now that he saw how much it was moving, he wondered how he hadn’t noticed it before. Though, he supposed, he had been staring at Jonah’s face and hands for most of the conversation, and it also seemed like the movement was getting worse as time passed.

“Jonah… if there’s anything I can do…” Xochiquetzal left his mouth hanging open, wordless.

Jonah stared at his own foot, watching the fabric move. “That was the biggest piece, you know.”

Xochiquetzal frowned, clearly confused, so Castiel did his best to be helpful.

“Jonah shared his expansive evidence with me. It was what he used to determine you weren’t really Adam.” Castiel glanced at the boy again, and the thick sheen of tears and repetitive sniffing told him Xochiquetzal’s interpretation hadn’t been wrong.

“What was the biggest piece?” Xochiquetzal asked softly, keeping his hands in his lap.

“Adam didn’t know my tics. He just said my stimming was weird.” Jonah sniffed, pumping his left fist at his side in cadence with the movement of his right foot. “Wasn’t mean. Just didn’t get it. Didn’t know what it meant. Didn’t want to take the time to learn.”

Xochiquetzal smiled sadly. “And I did.”

Jonah jerked his head once. “Mm.” He looked to his left, fixating on the bird bath and flower bed again. “Don’t wanna hug. Not today. But I will.”

“I can wait. I don’t mind.” Xochiquetzal took a deep breath. “You know I love you, right?”

Jonah jerked his head again. “Mm.” He pumped his fist, foot now twisting against the wood.

“As long as you know that, you don’t ever have to hug me again unless you want to. Okay?” Xochiquetzal put his hands to the deck and pushed himself up, getting his feet beneath him. “We’re going to head out, okay? It doesn’t look like there’s any monsters to worry about here—”

“—and I said I would keep an eye on things.” Jonah sniffed.

Xochiquetzal was confused briefly, having not heard that part of the conversation, but Castiel was confused because he thought a communal lunch was the reason Xochiquetzal had come out in the first place.

“I’d love it if you kept an eye on things. And I’ll be sure to text you more, just like you asked.”

Castiel tilted his head, no longer enthralled in an observation of Jonah, but finding himself preoccupied with Xochiquetzal instead. Something isn’t right.

Clearing his throat, Xochiquetzal pointed toward the door he had just come through, a tension in his throat and jaw Castiel wasn’t sure the humans could see. “We, uh, we better head out.”

“Don’t forget your shirt,” Jonah said quickly, putting a hand to his stomach.

Xochiquetzal smiled. “I won’t. And thank you again for getting it for me.”

“It was my idea,” Jonah clarified, moving his hands toward each other and, after a brief hesitation, resuming the rhythmic tapping of his knuckle. “Not Livie’s. Mine.”

Xochiquetzal gave a bewildered smile, seeming lost for a moment before he began to slowly nod. “Even though you already suspected I was a monster?”

“Never suspected that.” Jonah sniffed again. “Cryptid, maybe.” Sniff. “Reported to exist but not yet proven to exist.” Sniff. “Except I did now.” Sniff.

Xochiquetzal swallowed. “No matter what you thought I was, thank you for getting me a gift.”

Jonah jerked his head. “Mm.” Tap, tap, tap, sniff, curl, uncurl, sniff, tap, tap, tap. “You should go. We’ll be fine here.”

Pressing his lips together, Xochiquetzal stood for a moment, looking very much like he was trying to muster up… something. But after a few moments, he turned and hurried into the house. Castiel made brief eye contact with Dean, who only offered a helpless shrug, and then he rushed inside. He made it to the foyer just as Xochiquetzal was cutting off Carina.

“Nah, just got stuff going on, and goodbyes are always hard for me. I hate lingering, so—” Xochiquetzal pulled her into a quick hug, then did the same to Alyssa, and then kissed Olivia’s forehead before all but running out the front door.

Not bothering to say any goodbyes of his own, Castiel followed on his heels, trying to figure out what had just happened. Obviously, Xochiquetzal was upset because he had been found out by another family member, but there was more to it than that.

Castiel didn’t bother with doors, appearing on the left side of the Impala’s backseat and waiting for Xochiquetzal to join him. He noticed Drysdusa, who was curled up beside him in a shirt that smelled strongly of her companion. Looking around, Castiel found a spot between the front seats and carefully relocated her, withdrawing his hands just as Xochiquetzal fell into his seat and slammed the door.

Castiel watched the demon, hoping he would get some kind of explanation, or at least a face that was easy enough for him to read and make sense of.

Xochiquetzal didn’t oblige, turning his face away and pressing his forehead to the window.

I don’t know what to do. Castiel briefly thought of flying to Sam or Dean to ask them for help, but given all he had seen, he wasn’t sure they would be able to give him help that was… helpful.

“Don’t wanna hug. Not today. But I will.”

“I can wait. I don’t mind.”

And then Xochiquetzal had inhaled, and humans wouldn’t have heard it, but Castiel didn’t miss the way the air trembled going into his lungs.

Our only two currently standing rules are to not hurt each other physically and to not deceive each other. Castiel leaned over, questioning his own movements as he reached out. Oh, how wonderful it was to follow orders without hesitation or doubt. He grabbed Xochiquetzal’s arm, causing the demon to jump, and he started to pull, getting his other ram wrapped around Xochiquetzal’s waist.

“Castiel.”

Castiel stopped.

But Xochiquetzal didn’t say anything, just half sitting and half hanging there, so Castiel started pulling again. He pulled until Xochiquetzal’s upper body was on his lap, and then, after looking over the tangle of limbs and trying to decide how one might orchestrate an embrace, he pulled his friend against him.

He didn’t really do anything. Just held him there. He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to move—some people rubbed and patted, he had noticed—and he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to make noise or position their bodies to, for lack of a better term, fit together. But he was able to sit there, just holding Xochiquetzal’s chest and head against his stomach.

Xochiquetzal didn’t say anything—that was probably good; it meant a lack of objection, right?—but his left hand forced its way between them just enough to grab Castiel’s jacket in an unrelenting grip.

Am I doing this right?

He had his doubts, but… Xochiquetzal had promised not to deceive him. Castiel thought, in this situation, to remain silent and let Castiel think he was doing something correctly when he really wasn’t was indeed a form of deception. So, he decided to trust his friend.

And he held on a little tighter.