36. Chapter 36

Disclaimer: Supernatural belongs to Erik Kripke, Warner Brothers and quite possibly others who are not mentioned here. No money will be made from this fan fiction.

Summary: When Dean goes to sell his soul at the crossroads to bring Sam back, someone else steps in to negotiate the deal. Cas did get a sign and it sent him off into the past to change things. AU from The Man Who Would be King and All Hell Breaks Loose.

It's All in the Details

By Colleen

Chapter 36

"What in all of Creation's name you were thinking?" Unbound, Zachariah's true voice was loud enough to make a human's head explode and even Castiel and Uriel winced painfully at the sound of it. Cas quickly decided that this was not the time to play dumb. He might get some odd sense of enjoyment out of annoying his 'boss', but it would do him more harm than good at the moment.

He stiffened to military straightness and explained himself in his usual monotone.

"I was thinking that some of the angels under my command needed to see action. That a nest of demons needed to be scrubbed from the face of the Earth and that the righteous man needed to be protected from any further attempts to have him turned."

Zachariah froze with his mouth still open. Cas took it as an invitation to continue.

"A demon recently hired some vampires and instructed them to find and turn the righteous man. That demon was in the Niveus Headquarters when we attacked."

He'd almost have to thank Crowley for that…almost.

Zachariah started to breathe again. "You believe it was dealt with?"

Castiel nodded. "No further such attempts should occur where that demon is concerned."

Zachariah sat down heavily at his desk and made an effort to composed himself. When he looked back up at the two of them, the smile on his face made both of them want to take a step back.

"Well Castiel, I'm glad to see that you're taking such good care of your charges. Given that care, I believe you should be promoted to a much more important charge, temporarily at least."

"Sir?"

"As you know, Uriel is the archangel protecting the prophet. He is doing an excellent job, but I believe he would benefit from some time spent with the righteous man. While he is doing that, you could have the honour of watching over Chuck Shurley for a time."

Castiel frowned and then because he had to, he out and out lied. "I am not an archangel."

"No, but you can deal with the smaller problems that might crop up and call Uriel to you for any threat that would require his strength."

Cas nodded his acceptance. Inside he was seething, but it would do little good to let his superior know that. It would only spur him to continue this latest farce longer.

"So, I am to watch Castiel's mud monkeys for him?" Uriel asked, speaking up for the first time since they'd come before Zachariah.

Cas winced. "I would not call them such to their faces brother."

Uriel and Zachariah snorted. It was a little thing, expected even, but Castiel tensed and gave serious thought to killing both of them and being done with this.

He forced himself to relax. He was overreacting, and while he was certain that he would have to cut his ties with Heaven at some point, he wasn't ready to be hunted for killing his brothers.

"I believe it would be best if I told Dean and Sam about the change of guard

The expression on Zachariah's face reminded Castiel of a picture he'd once seen of a man with a bug up his nose. Or perhaps it was his ass.

"Very well, if you must."

Cas and Uriel both gave their superior something between a nod and a bow and left the 'office' as Zachariah turned to other work.

xxxx

"Shall I go with you while you explain things to the humans?"

Cas shook his head. "It would be best if I dealt with them alone, at first. I will call for you once…" He broke off and tilted his head, looking his brother over. "You are missing something."

Uriel frowned and then his hand went to his throat. "The grace, yes. Zachariah ask me for it shortly before I went to protect the prophet. He felt that it would need more protection than just one angel." Uriel chuckled. "Even one archangel."

"Ah." Castiel nodded, but inside he was frowning. Zachariah's interest in Anna's grace meant something. He just didn't know what.

xxxx

Ellen dropped the file she'd been looking at onto the kitchen table with a disgusted and slightly green look on her face. "If the FDA had seen some of this, Niveus would have been out of business long ago."

Rufus looked up from the file he was reading. "That assumes there aren't demon's in the FDA."

Ellen grimaced and picked up another file. "True."

Bobby stood up and stretched, before giving the two of them a look. "So, Coffee, beer or whiskey?"

"Coffee." Ellen said, deciding for all of them. "If I start drinking anything stronger I'm not going to stop until I'm drunk." She gave the last file another disgusted look. "So ask me that question again in a few more hours."

Bobby gave her a huff of laughter and then went to put on the coffee.

xxxx

Gabriel, or rather Loki, had been following Crowley off and on since they'd met. Cas had extracted a promise from him that he wouldn't kill the demon, before leaving the payback for the whole turning Dean and trying to kill Kaseva mess in his hands.

Things like this were why Earth was so much more fun than Heaven.

Mixing a good prank with a dose of justice was… well, it was what Gabriel/Loki was made for. But you had to work up to it. Start small and see what annoyed the target. Find out what they would ignore and what well and truly would get under their skin, borrowed though it might be in this case.

He just hadn't expected to have so much trouble stalking one little demon.

Crowley was almost as paranoid as the Winchester's friend Bobby was, at least when it came to angels. There wasn't an inch of his home that wasn't covered in Enochian warding. The solid, blood sacrifice, sunk into the foundations type warding. Looking them over, Gabriel suspected that it would actually be easier to enter Hell and attack the demon when he was dealing with business there.

Still, Crowley did leave the house from time to time and more importantly, shipments came into the house.

Shipments like, a twelve-bottle case of thirty-year-old Craig whiskey.

xxxx

Cas mentally searched for the Winchesters and was rather disturbed to discover that they were in Carthage, Missouri. He appeared in the back of the parked Impala, startling the brothers.

"Damn it Cas… some warning would be nice." Dean complained.

"Apologies, but I still believe the warning would be just as startling."

Sadly, Dean realized that he couldn't argue with that.

"So, what's up?" Dean turned in his seat to look at the angel. "You didn't get into trouble over the Niveus thing, did you?"

Cas gave his head a slight tilt. "To a degree. I have been reassigned for a time."

Dean and Sam winced at the news.

"The new assignment is fine; however, they have appointed another angel to you. His name is Uriel, he has archangel status… and you won't like him."

"Great." Dean said sarcastically.

"I will have to call him here, to introduce you to him. He will probably take that opportunity to disappear your hex bags."

"Double great. I am not making those gross ones again."

Cas gave him a small huff of a laugh. "I will leave you the instructions for the ones I usually give you. Sam can probably recreate them."

Dean huffed and straightened in his seat, tensing slightly as a man with a lost expression began to walk down the street.

"What are you hunting?" Cas asked.

"Rougarou."

Sam made an annoyed sound.

Dean sighed. "Fine, guy who might become a Rougarou, if he ever eats human flesh. We've warned him, which is why he looks like someone hit him over the head with a frying pan." He frowned. "We didn't do this hunt last timeline, did we?" Cas frowned as well and Dean turned his head to look at him again. "Or should I stop asking time travel related questions?"

"No, you never know when such a question may be important. As for this… Originally, I was very busy trying to keep the seals from breaking. I only noticed your regular hunts if they were more life threatening or unusual than… usual."

"So, we were good on this one?"

"It had its share of close calls. You survived and Sam made the decision to stop using the powers the demon blood gave him." Something that should have made his superiors happy, but he now realized that there had been a lot of teeth gritting going on at the time.

Sam looked disturbed. "That sounds like something bad happened."

"Possibly." Castiel knew he had looked over the report on this incident because of Sam's decision and Dean nearly getting eaten, but for the most part he had only skimmed it. "I don't know what or why… but I believe whatever caused it had something to do with the fact that that man's wife is pregnant."

"Ah crap. Travis."

xxxx

Jack sat down on a bus stop bench, and was staring blankly into middle space when a black car pulled up in front of him.

"Get in." He recognized the shorter of the two men who had come to talk with him that afternoon.

"Look, I haven't…"

"We know. We think something's wrong at your house. Now get in."

Panicked enough to move without thinking, Jack slid into the Impala's backseat. A third man that he didn't know nodded at him from the other seat.

"What's happening?" Jack almost didn't recognize his own voice, it was that strained.

The man in the front seat with the longer hair answered him. "There's another hunter involved in this. We think he's about to do something… stupid."

Jack fumbled his phone out of his pocket and called home. No one picked up. He made a quick check and found a voice mail message from his wife, asking him to come home and that she needed to talk with him about something.

Which meant she should have still been at home to answer.

"No." That one word felt like a punch to the gut for everyone in the car.

Cas sighed. He knew he shouldn't get involved, but… he could hardly turn his responsibility over to Uriel in mid conflict.

At least, that would be the story if anyone asked.

"What is your address?"

"What?"

Sam reeled it off to him before Cas could ask again. With a nod, the angel shifted his appearance to the more casual version of his Kaseva costume and disappeared.

"What the fuck!"

"It's okay man. If she's in trouble, he'll get her out." Sam explained.

"Who the hell are you people?" Okay, maybe he wasn't what you could call normal, but that was so far left of normal he didn't know what it was.

xxxx

Cas appeared in the living room. From his position, he could see Jack's wife, tied to a chair with a tea towel across her mouth as a gag. He didn't see the hunter anywhere.

He came up behind the bound woman and untied the gag.

"Shh."

"Jack?" She asked quietly, trying to twist around to look at him.

"N…" A man came up behind him and shoved a cloth with a sickly sweet smell on in into his face. Cas shrugged him off, turned, looked at him for a moment and then gave him a push.

He used a little more strength than he should have. The guy landed flat on the dining room table in the next room. He groaned and tried to sit up.

"You should stay down." Cas told him, before going back to finish untying the young woman.

"Who are you… and where's Jack?" There were tears in her voice.

"My name is Kaseva. Jack is with some friends of mine, they should be here shortly."

He helped her stand. Noises from the dining room caught their attention and they both turned to see that Travis hadn't followed Cas' suggestion.

"Or we could go to them," he said.

xxxx

Travis had a flamethrower in hand and was just about to light it up when the Rougarou's wife and the, whatever it was, that had just thrown him across the room simply blinked out of existence.

Back in the Impala, Dean looked around confused as he heard a small chime going off. Cas and Mrs. Montgomery appeared in the backseat next to Jack a moment after.

"Michelle."

Eyes wide, she apparently decided to go with hugging her husband over trying to make sense of any of this.

Dean pulled over to the curb. They were still a couple of blocks from Jack's place.

"Cas?"

"I do not believe I like that friend of yours."

"Yeah well, he used to hunt with dad. They were kind of old school."

Cas shook his head. "I do not believe there is any school where a hunter should kidnap an innocent to use as bait. Especially when it isn't necessary to complete the kill."

"What, you think this guy can stay on the straight and narrow?"

"I do not know. I only know that Jack would not have been very difficult to ambush without such bait. The hunter was going to kill both of them and he wasn't going to make it easy." He'd seen that much in the man's eyes before he'd pushed him away, which might have had some bearing on why he'd over done that.

Jack and his wife unclenched. "What do you mean?"

Cas gave them a brief glance. "He had chloroform. He could have made sure you were unconscious for what he had to do. However, he was only going to use it to capture Jack. He fully intended for the both of you to be awake when he burned you alive."

Michelle sobbed and buried her face in her husband's chest. "Why?"

Jack closed his eyes and held onto her. "Because of me. Oh, God. I am so sorry this had to touch you."

"Actually, I believe he originally intended to let your wife go once you were dead."

"Then why?"

"She told him she was pregnant."

The Montgomery's were busy hugging again and Dean gave the still disguised angel beside them a wry look. "I think we need to take this discussion some place safer."

With a nod from Cas they all disappeared, car included.

xxxx

Dean shook his head and then looked the house over. "Victorian. Haven't seen this one before. "Where are we?"

"North Dakota."

"Huh, I would have thought that the cabin would have been closer."

Cas had a suddenly irritated look on his face. "Loki has been annoying the neighbours there. It would be best not to use it for a time."

"Ah."

"So," Dean asked as he looked over to where Jack and Michelle were huddled together on a couch. "What do we do about them?"

Mrs. Montgomery apparently heard him. "I want an explanation."

With a sigh, Sam and Dean sat down on the couch across from the couple. Cas, or rather Kaseva, took up a standing position behind the same couch.

It was a very long explanation.

xxxx

Realizing that Uriel was probably becoming very irritated at the delay, Castiel shifted his appearance and his wards, moving them back to the power levels he presented as an angel before flying to meet him. He found him watching over the prophet.

Chuck was obviously running full throttle, whatever visions he saw translating themselves to the keyboard at a furious rate. Invisible and soundless, Uriel stood behind him, reading the text as it came up on the screen.

Castiel stiffened as he arrived beside the other angel. He'd never though Uriel would bother to read what Chuck was writing, even if it was the Word of God. Cas realized that he had been steering clear of the prophet ever since killing Raphael and that was a foolish thing to do.

Uriel looked up from the screen. "Brother, I was beginning to think you were avoiding me."

"No. Castiel tilted his head as he read what was on Chuck's computer screen. "I have been preparing the Winchesters. Unfortunately, they are in the middle of a hunt. Introductions would be difficult to do at the moment."

Castiel frowned at the screen as he realized that he was reading the hunt for a Rougarou, only from the differences, this one was running the way it had in the original timeline. It was quite likely that Chuck was still seeing both futures.

"I should get back to them."

Uriel frowned at him.

"I will call you once the matter has been dealt with. It would be best if they didn't have other distractions when I introduce you."

The other angel gave him a snort, but nodded and went back to watching Chuck. Cas gave the computer screen one more concerned look and then disappeared.

xxxx

Sam and Dean stepped out onto the safe house's porch. From the exterior, the place turned out to be an abandoned farmhouse. The Impala was parked at the front steps.

Their trip outside for fresh air was partly to let Jack and Michelle talk things over and partially so Sam could answer his phone. Travis had already called them three times since they'd arrived.

"Hey Travis." Sam pulled the phone away from his ear at the explosion of sound.

"Where the hell are you two? They got away.'

Carefully Sam put the phone back to his ear. "What do you mean, they. I thought we were only hunting Jack."

"His wife is pregnant. We have to take her out as well."

"Or… we could wait until she has the kid and then take it out." Sam frowned at the silence on the other end.

"What, you think I could kill a baby?"

Sam shook his head. "Okay, so you're saying you can't kill a baby once it's been born, but you can kill it and the innocent mother that's carrying it as long as it's in the womb? Either way you cut it, both options are sick."

"Sam."

"Look, you're on your own. Dean and I are done. We're already out of the state."

"Fuck." There was a loud noise and then the line went dead.

Sam closed his phone.

"Ever think we'll end up with as many falling outs as Dad did?" Dean asked him.

Sam laughed. "Probably, but I suspect that it'll be for better reasons."

Dean nodded in agreement and they both went back into the house.

xxxx

Sometime during the night, Jack had made a choice. He wanted his wife, his family and nothing, not even his own hunger was going to get in that way.

Well, nothing except for one thing.

"Michelle?"

His wife hugged herself, staring at her body like she expected it to betray her.

He was just reaching out to her when the guy who was dressed all in black, the one who'd saved her, seemed to pop into existence in the middle of the room.

He looked at both of them and then focused on Michelle, tilting his head.

"Are you alright?"

Startled, she actually answered him. "Oh, fine. Except someone just tried to kill us because my husband and my unborn child could both become flesh eating monsters."

Jack flinched.

"Actually, I calculate that there is a 1 in 6 chance that the gene would never activate in your child, although if that happened they could still pass it on to their children." Cas told her.

"Wait."

Turning, they noticed the Winchesters standing in the entrance to the room. "You mean her kid might never turn?" Dean asked.

"Yes. The rougarou gene is strong, but the contribution from the mother should not be ignored. It is entirely possible it could cause the gene to skip a generation. Even if it doesn't, it can be controlled by diet."

"Yeah, a really strict diet." Dean glanced at Jack. "No offence, but that kind of hunger is hard to fight."

Jack shook his head. "Not if you've got something worth fighting it for." He looked at his wife, his expression pained and uncertain.

She crossed the room and hugged him before she'd even consciously thought about it. Both of them shuddered as they wrapped their arms around each other.

"So, what are we going to about Travis? 'Cause we're not killing him and that's the only thing I can come up with that would stop him."

Sam appeared to think about it, but it was Cas who answered.

"Whatever they do, they should move to another town. Possibly even another state."

Dean gave him a narrow eyed look and Cas sighed.

"While I hope future events won't occur, some very bad things happened in Carthage the first time around. Since they will have to move anyway, further would be better."

Dean had a feeling that Cas was somehow underplaying what had happened. "Should we be terrified?"

The angel nodded. "Yes, you should."

xxxx

In the end, Cas ended up helping a lot. Partly because any delay in trading his current position with Uriel was preferable. Mostly though, he just liked helping Dean and Sam. More and more he realized that he'd rather do jobs with them than continue dealing with Heaven.

Sadly, he didn't see that happening anytime soon.

xxxx

Travis couldn't find them anywhere. Not in the state, hell not even in the country and that didn't make any sense. Sure, he knew that Jack was an orphan, but his wife had family. He hadn't bothered to look them up at the time but he knew they existed. Now, he couldn't even find proof that either of them had ever been born, much less to who.

All he could do was wait until Jack started killing. Not how he wanted this to go down, but there didn't seem to be anything else he could do.

xxxx

New city, new job, new life. It was disturbing that there were people out there that could make something like that happen before they'd woken up the next morning, but Jack decided he wasn't going to dwell on it. He was just going to do the best he could to live it.

x

Author's note: I had always intended Jack and Michelle to be on my, 'you can't save everyone list'. When I re-watched the episode and realized that it took place in Carthage my brain went off in the opposite direction. Mostly because of the Death raising thing, but partially because I have cousins that live in that area and any time Carthage came up I ended up giggling through parts of the episodes. And no, I don't hate my cousins. It was just funny to me that of all the places for extreme weirdness to happen in the series, it was there.