Stubborn Fools
"Oh, Uncle, there was just one more thing." Babe lifts a finger in the air as Claire catches Billy up on her tenure as substitute angel. "Can I borrow your ring for a moment? We have to get Michael out of the cage so Raph'll stop sulking and reopen heaven and clear the veil so the storks can go out unaided." She holds out her hand. "I'll bring it right back."
"I'm afraid that impossible." Death shakes his head.
"Okay. Fine. What do I have to do for it?" Babe sighs crossing her arms, twitching her golden wings in mild irritation. "I'm just trying to lighten your workload after all."
"You misunderstand. I'm not attempting to negociate. In truth my ring would be useless to you. The cage was damaged when the darkness was released. More significantly, the lock was broken. It will no longer open that way."
"Oh." Babe scrunches her nose. "Fuck. i did not want to involve that damn demon and his whore mother. Maybe Cate knows where she is. Or is that particular witchy tribute to hecate just lip service now? She might keep track anyways. I don't suppose you'd be willing to pop in and pull him out? No?"
"I am not going to solve your problems for you, Gabrielle." Death says sternly. "Especially not ones you and your siblings are perfectly capable of taking care of this on your own. The cage is on it's last legs. It was not built to contain Michael and her flames combined with hellfire are a very potent combination. A little effort and you can begin to dismantle it yourself."
"Yes, uncle.Thank you for the information, though. Sorry you got dragged into the family squabble that way. Since I know Dad's never going to apologize for that, I figure you should know someone thinks it was a dick move." Babe rubs the back of her neck. Death just lightly pats her on the head.
"It appreciate the sentiment. And thank you for that most entertaining tuesday a few years back."
"What? Oh, ha, you liked that?" Babe grins.
"It was the most amusing thing I've seen since one of the leviathan forced another to eat itself."
"Well, you know, christmas is coming up, so unless there's something else you think you'd like more." Babe offers. Claire bounces a marshmallow off her head.
"Don't even joke about killing Dean again. Your brother, and me and your FIANCEE would absolutely not appreciate that." She reminds her.
"I know. I wasn't being serious." She protests, then turns back to her uncle mouthing 'Yes I was, I fucking hate him.' "Anyways I guess I've got to go talk to Cass about jailbreaking Miqa. Coming, Claire?"
"That sounds like you're going to give her a factory reset or something." Claire laughs. "And no, I still need to talk to Billie about a few work related things before I take her out, if she lets me. I'll meet you back at the bunker." Claire waves her off.
"Later, kiddo." Babe snaps herself back to the bunker. "Sampaquita!" She appears in his lap, face to face, as he dumps the chopped chicken into the bowl of salad. "Good news, Uncle's agreed to have his reapers help take the storks out of the abyss until we get stuff cleared up and to help oversee reincarnation when I can't be there."
"Wow, how's you get him to agree to that." Sam gives her a quick kiss hello.
"Actually, I'm fairly sure it's because Azrael was being as stubborn as Raph. She won't leave the abyss because of her whole, what's dead should stay dead thing. By expanding his services it gives her an opening to adjust her views accordingly. Well, at least I think that's what he's thinking. It's really weird thinking of my uncle being in love with my little sister, and I don't mean because of the whole inapplicably incestuous phrasing, you know."
"You have an uncle?" Dean brings in a burger and the blue cheese dressing that he hands to Sam for his salad.
"Yeah. Death?" Babe looks back at him as if he said something stupid.
"Um, honey? I need to..." Sam nods to the salad as she's in the way of him mixing it. For such a little thing, she can take up an awful lot of space.
"Oh, right. Allow me." She purrs and takes the bowl. "This is the girlfreinds job, amirite Deano?" Babe winks at him and starts mixing it by gently tossing it in the air. Dean just glares at her until she laughs at him.
"Thats good, thanks." Sam sighs and takes the bowl away.
"Already? Damn, I'm good." this just gets her a tired look. "Oh, so, the baby thing is all taken care of until we get Michael out at least. the bad news is that the lock on the cage is broken. Meaning the key won't work."
"Oh, please tell me we're not going to have to work with those scottish irish whatever assholes again." Dean half slumps down in his chair. "Why does Crowley have an english accent anyway? If he's supposed to be a scot. Don't they hate england?"
"Come now, surely you must be aware of the concept of a child doing something soley to piss their parents off. Wearing your hair long or short, getting tattoos, estroying and corrupting humanity, pretending to be british.."
"Stealing the ark of the covenant?" Sam adds.
"No. No, that was not to piss of Dad. I actually have never done anything for the sole reason of pissing off my father."
"Oh, please, your entire pagan experience was just a giant episode of girls gone wild, fueled by more daddy issues than thousand LAs Vagas review."
"Do you really want to talk daddy issues, big boy? Do you? Really?"
"Both of you. Enough." Sam pleads trying to look around Babe's puffy hair.
"And will you get off him? I'm trying to eat here."
"I'm sorry. Am I making you slightly uncomfortable?" She apologizes sweetly. "Here, allow me to fix that." Babe snaps her fingers removing her clothes. "So, Samshine." She returns her attention to an exhasperated Sam. "Cassie and me are going to have to go down and take the cage apart so I wanted to play a little before I get my ass kicked by my big sister." Dean gives Sam a hard look, practically demanding he do something about his girlfreind.
"Let me eat first?"
"Eat during." She turns back to grab the salad again. Dean quickly looks away, sheilding his face with his arm. "Really? I know they're hardly impressive, but I didn't think they were repulsive." She looks down at her breasts and jiggles her shoulders. "Breasts are fun, aren't they?"
"Dude.. just go before I puke, will you?"
"You got it, Deano." Dean looks back at the next snap of the fingers and sees Sam's clothes draped over the chair across from him. The salad's gone as well. How the hell do you eat an actual meal during sex? Much less a salad. Those are kind of two activities that require your full attention or you may as well not even.... Dean stops to think for a minute, then gets up and goes back to the kitchen to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
"Cas! C'mere for a minute!"
"Are you sure about this?" Jodie carries the last box into the apartment.
"Yeah, I'm sure." Alex nods. "Bree's apartment is right downstairs and it's all fortified and protected. So is this. I need to be near him and I want him to be able to have a place he can be alone, but secure. Plus it's close to school and I already signed up for classes this semester."
"Can you afford this place? That looks like a solid granite countertop." Jodie runs her fingers over the top of the island separating the kitchen from the living room half of the main room.
"Yeah. Not sure how, but it costs the same as Bree's studio. I'm going to assume divine intervention, but the scholarships actually cover the costs." Alex shrugs. "I kind of had to jump on it."
"Do you have a bed yet?" Jodie looks around the empty apartment.
"Yup. An air mattress for now. Claire's taking me to goodwill as soon as she gets her car fixed."
"Are you sure you don't want to just stay at home until you get something like a table or an actual mattress?"
"Jodie. I'm fine." She starts to unpack the kitchenware. She'd started picking up stuff at yard sales after graduation. She'd hoped to get a dorm room but when the Winchesters came back, and it became clear she was not yet going to be free of the supernatural, it just seemed like a good way to get a dead room mate.
"You know, you don't have to do this." Jodie puts a hand on her shoulder. "You're not a therapist yet, and after being locked in a cage for years... look, nobody reacts well to solitary... they can't expect you to..."
"I've been consulting with professors and looking things up. I... look, I want to do this." Alex turns to look at her. "I'm more comfortable with the supernatural than any fully trained therapist. I'm more familiar with angels and the entire situation in general than they could hope to be by the time he gets out, and that really counts for a lot. Besides, after Miti and Zuri his siblings don't want anyone else to do it." She can't help but smile when she says it. It's a hell of a compliment.
"I don't want you to, Alex. It's too dangerous. He's an archangel, Alex. A crazy archangel... And the oldest living being there is. Do you really think he's going to listen to some teenage girl just entering college?"
"I'm not going to be telling him what to do. Therapy's pretty much just listening and asking questions and stuff. I'm not going to hold myself up as an expert or anything but a slightly more experienced guide directing him to techniques and resources developed by experts. And he's not going to hurt me. He did everything he could to protect Adam and then helped him escape the cage, even though it meant that he'd be completely alone. That's a person i would trust my life with and I will. He deserve help and a freindly sympathetic ear at the very least, and I can give him that, so I will."
"I don't know. I still don't like it. What do Sam and Dean think about this?" Fortunately Alex is spared answering by the appearance of an angel in teh apartment.
"Alex?" Miti looks up at her, her eyes filled with distress. "Can I speak to you?"
"Yeah, sure. Um, the bedroom's this way. Excuse us, Jodie." Alex ushers Miti aside. "Is everything okay?"
"They brought Raphael back. He's still in the abyss, but..." Amitiel sits down on the air mattress sinking down into it. She barely notices. "I don't know how I feel and it's.." She hugs her arms to herself.
"Upset?" Alex sits next to her. Miti shrugs. "Angry? Sad? Resentful? Guilty? Happy?"
"Yes. I... Everything. Everything I did was under his orders. The people I told them to torture..."
"Mitit." Alex touches her arm, catching her excessive recrimination again. "What was that last sentance?"
"The... the people I told them to torture?"
"Is that a literal truth or an emotional truth?" She gently prods the angel to reframe her thoughts.
"I don't know. My own various lies and truths and wrongs are harder to identify." Miti explains again, not looking up.
"Did you tell them 'torture this angel'? Or did you just tell them if an angels statements were true or false and what kind of true or false it was?"
"It's the same thing."
"No. It isn't. Look, what they did afterwards... that's not... You didn't have a say in that. And it's not as if you didn't object. Every time you realized what they were doing, why they were asking these questions, how they were 'correcting' your siblings, you objected. And every time, they just erased your memories of what you were objecting to. Just because you weren't 'corrected' the usual way is no reason to..."Alex stops as Miti hugs her arms tightly to herself. "Did they?"
"Yes. Once."
"You didn't tell me."
"It didn't work. I couldn't say what they wanted me to say. I couldn't believe what they wanted me to believe. They ended up having to correct my correcters. I thought they were going to execute me, but they didn't. That was when Michael was aiding Joan of Arc. There weren't any more corrections after that. Not until Anael ripped out her grace. I don't know why. They just erased so much." Amitiel closes her eyes. Alex sits next to her and puts a hand on her shoulder.
"You have every right to be angry with the person in charge. Miti. You weren't in charge. You did everything you could have done. Don't be afraid to put the blame where it really lies. Raphael was responsible for these things, then being angry with him isn't unreasonable."
"I don't want to be angry with him. Just like I didn't want to be angry with Castiel for what he did. He's my brother. He taught me to fly and fight and healed my wounds. He always speaks what he believes to be the truth. Always, always. He's a good angel, I know he is, but I'm just so angry."
"You have the right to be."
"I don't want to be!" Miti insists. "I'm so angry. I don't want to be angry. I want to be happy to see him and glad he's back and forgive him and have my big brother again, but instead I just hate myself." she starts to cry. Alex puts her arms around her, and lets her cry, sending a silent prayer to Zuriel and Rye to come and hold her as well. Whenever she's upset, it always helps more to have her brothers around her. Angels are just as social as humans, if not more so. Being alone, being cut off from their brothers must be the worst torture in all of existence.
"Hey, Cassie!" Babe calls as she and Sam return to the bunker. "Casti-e-el where are you-u?"
"What are you doing? We both know you know where he is. "Sam ruffles her hair and goes to lie down on the sofa.
"Well, yeah, but it's polite to pretend." She grins leaning over the back of it. "So, wow."
"You now, if you had given me that little tip earlier before just hauling it out to tease Cas with it, you'd have been saying that alot sooner." He winks at her. "Why didn't you? Were you bashful?"
"I don't know. Maybe." She actually blushes a little. "I dunno, It wasn't that important and I didn't want you to think I was high maintenance or anything." Sam just starts laughing.
"Well, if you weren't, that wouldn't push you over the edge."
"Are you saying I'm high maintenance?" She gives him a mock offended look, her hand on her chest.
"No. No, I'm very carefully not saying anything like that."
"Oh, you're going to pay for that one." She rolls over the back of the sofa, landing on top of him.
"Oof." he winces
"Oh, please. I'm four fifths of a tiny person. I weigh like nothing." Babe scoffs.
"Nothing is very heavy when it lands elbow first on my diaphragm."
"Whoopsie."
"Gabriel. What do you want?" Castiel calls. Babe pushes herself up to look over the sofa at an irritated little brother, more disheveled than she's seen him in a while.
"Time to break out Miqa. Oh, and Cassie.." She points to the corner of her mouth. "There's some... jelly." Cas wipes his mouth.
"Very well." Castiel nods. "Dean.." he turns back just as Dean walks up running his fingers back through is hair, and brushing some crumbs off the back of his collar. "Gabriel and I are going to free Michael."
"I'm going with you."
"Sure." Babe grins at him. "If you don't mind getting blasted to bits if his vessel's no longer in tact."
"It'll be alright, Dean." Cas puts a hand to his cheek and goes to give him a kiss, but Dean backs away a bit.
"Wait let me br..."But Cas kisses him mid protest. "Oh, okay."
"Oh, is that what we're doing?"Babe comments and goes back down. "I hope you're rested, Sammy bear."
"Babe" Sam puts a finger to her mouth and kisses her nose. "Behave."
"Not a chance. Love you, Sam."
"I love you too, Gabrielle."
"Sister." Castiel snaps a bit irritably.
"I'm coming." Babe sighs resting her head on Sam's chest.
"It'll be fine." Sam reassures her.
"Yeah, sure." She grimaces and gets to her feet, careful not to jab him again in the process. "Lead the way, Cassie." She follows him off through the dimensions.
"I don't know why you're worried, Gabriel. You aren't the one who molotoved her with holy fire." Castiel comments gravely as they head down to the depths. Her snigger is only slightly annoying.
"That's right. Where the hell did 'assbutt' come from anyway?" She flies over to nudge him, knocking him slightly off course.
"I don't know." he confesses. " I was terrified. I was lucky I managed to speak at all."
"Yeah, she's probably going to be a little pissed about that. But that's okay. I know how to piss her off worse so if there's trouble just go right back to the bunker, okay? It's sealed against him."
"I won't leave you to face him alone."
"Cas. I won't BE facing her when you're gone. Miqa can kick my ass easily, but only if she can catch me. I can outfly her. I can outfly anyone. At least I can once I don't have to keep her attention away from you, so if things go bad, you haul ass, got it? That's the best thing you can do for me, understand?"
"Yes."
"Liar," she sighs, her heart tightening in her chest as they near the twisted cage. The light of his grace is so dull. Michael has always been the biggest brightest light in all of creation, second only to their father himself. "Michael?" Babe calls to the form curled in the corner, still compressed into the surprisingly intact, otherwise unoccupied vessel. Of course, Adam couldn't have escaped still in his body. "Miqa?" Gabriel tugs at the top where the key is indeed wharped and fused together. "Miqa it's me. It's Gabriel. Can you hear me?"
There's no response except for a small motion that could be either a sigh or a weak sob. It's impossible to tell. Castiel flies down and pulls at the bars with Gabriel, but they won't budge.
"Michael. We can't open this without you. Please don't make us deal with demons and witches to get you out!" Babe pulls at the same bar as Cas and it bends slightly, shorting out one of the seals. but try as they might none of the other bars budge further. "Michael." Babe reaches her hand down to try and reach him but that's all that will fit through the space by the wharped bar. The rest of the seals press too tightly to let her grace through any more. "Michael, please...."
"Everything okay?" Jodie asks as Alex comes out, looking a little exhausted.
"I don't know." She leans against the counter as Jodie puts the cans away. "You're giving me the clam sauce? Thanks."
"Any time. I'm giving you the soup mug too." Jodie hands her the large blue bowl shaped mug. "For your noodles."
"Yay! It holds oodles." Alex gives a conspiratory grin.
"Is Miti okay?"
"She will be." Alex drums her fingers on the mug. "I find myself wishing angels had genders because Bree has another brother I'd love to kick in the balls right now."
"Are you okay?"
"Yes." Alex sighs and goes to drink from the mug forgetting there's nothing in it unitl it reaches her lips. "i'm going to go lie down, if that' sokay. Thanks for helping me move in."
"Here." Jodie takes out her wallet and puts a twenty in the mug. "For dinner. I was going to take you out, but you rest and order something later, okay?"
"Thanks." Alex smiles as Jodie gives her a squeeze, rubbing her arm, before heading out. Alex puts the mug down and goes back to her room.
"Hey, Alex." Babe appears beside her as she plops down on the re pumped air matress. The angel looks a bit depressed herself.
"Can I take a nap first?" Alex asks before her friend can make her request. "Seeing your brother sent Miti back into crisis so I really need a break before the next emergency if that's at all possible."
"Sure." Babe pats Alex's head. "It'll go snuggle with my Sampai until you're ready."
"Is everything okay?" Alex just can't help herself.
"Michael is... dim... She won't move or speak or even try to get out. We moved a bar and made a gap but I couldn't get more than my arm in and.. she wouldn't even grab my hand."
"Dim?" It's like an instinct, how she finds the most significant word of it all and hones in on it.
"Weak. her grace is all but gone. I don't know how badly off she is, really. I just... I've never seen her like this. I don't know what to do."
"What can help him get stronger? If he's just physically weak."
"Her and some energy from souls but she's not able to take it himself and I can't get in there to give it to him."
"Is there a way I could give some of mine to him? Just like a willing transfer or something? I know the gregori fed off Claire's mother's soul, maybe I could feed him in a similar way."
"Yes. But it could drain you pretty badly and you'd have to be in there to do it. Not to mention the hellfire and the fact that Michael's grace reacts to it like... an accelerant. That's not even talking about the fact that the cage in and of itself is a punishment. Sam won't talk about it, but I don't think all it does is confine you."
"Well, just don't leave me in there longer than you have to I guess. Maybe a rope or tether or something? Just let me take a nap first. And don't tell Claire I'm doing this or she'll kill us... don't tell anyone I'm agreeing to do this, okay? just take me there yourself, lower me in, let me try and revive him a little and take me out. Okay?"
"You got it, kiddo." Babe smiles and gives the young woman a squeeze. "If I had a son you could marry, he'd be all yours."
"You do have a son, Bree. Two of them in fact. Both unmarried. Of course I'm not into bestiality and Yuri's gay and in a relationship with his uncle, so no thanks, but the sentiment is appreciated." Alex rolls her eyes.
"No. Rhys man's up pretty nicely. He's just a playboy that's all. Not exactly the marrying type." Babe shakes her head. "Never takes anything seriously. Just wants to have fun and enjoy himself."
"Takes after his daddy, huh?" Alex nudges her.
"Yup. Mein liben gubben." Babe sighs whistfully. "I'm not the best role model I'm afraid."
"If he took after you in every other way, I'm sure he's wonderful." Alex consoles her. "Once he decides to settle down I'm sure his lady will be a lucky woman."
"Ahhh, he's a playful loving happy little puppy. Even after everything." Babe gives a sad smile. "Well, you rest up. I'll be back. And thank you."
"No prob." Alex just grabs the nearest pillow and covers her head. Getting Michael already.... Maybe she shouldn't have enrolled this semester after all.