Chapter Text
Gabriel woke up on the floor of that run down hotel ballroom in Muncie, Indiana at dawn. After a quick self-assessment, he came to the conclusion he was back better, stronger, healthier, and more focused than he had been since the beginning. Realizing years had passed, it took him a while to get his bearings, his first thoughts were of getting caught up on what he had missed while avoiding detection. The first thing he realized, without knowing how, was The Darkness had been released. Like the world's worst Thanksgiving dinner; where the one relative you never see shows up and drinks too much then starts talking politics and religion. His aunt needed to be put down, again, but his brother, the bag of dicks who left him on the ballroom floor, was the only creature he knew of who could be of any help. Luci joining the party, however, meant Sam being hollowed out and Gabriel would die, again, before he let that happen. So, his brother needs to crawl his way out of the Cage, and the Pit, and find himself a body; one that won’t explode and is not Sam Winchester. All of this meant he found himself tracking a man he knew wouldn't help him but he was knocking on the window of a nearly new Jag startling the two people asleep in the back awake anyway.
“Jesus Gabe!” the woman says opening the door and crawling out onto the ground to stand up while her companion slides out the other side and stands to his full, impressive, height and stretches.
“Yeah, man, what the fuck?” the giant says bracing over the roof of the car on his forearms.
“The Darkness,” the angel starts but is cut off by the beautiful brunette on the ground at his feet.
“Yeah, we know, help me up already.” She is beautiful, Gabriel realizes when she is standing in front of him. Her dark hair is thick and full. French braided tightly to her skull hanging down to her waist, her eyes are the same rich, almond shaped, hazel he sees staring at him from across the hood of the car, her lips, also an exact replica of her companion's, are sinfully full and pouty, and her Rubenesque figure hides a strong, powerful physique that is only a couple inches shorter than him.
He lets go of her hands with a startled realization and looks over to the man he came to see, “When, how, did you manage this?”
The woman laughs, “Beth, Gabe, my name is Beth.” She reaches out and wraps the angel in what would be a bone crushing embrace for a human, “I'm so, so glad to see you! This?” she gestures at herself, “It happened a few weeks ago, history finally caught up with us and, boy, did we need a coping mechanism! So...” she shrugs and smiles, “that's how it happened.”
Gabriel laughs, “Then Creation really is a paradox. Will you ever tell me the whole story?” The big man grins and shakes his head, Gabriel laughs again, “Look Olle, man, I've been vertical for about an hour and a half and I came back to a shit storm. How about we just get on with it? I need a favor.”
“Let's go, I'm starving,” Olle says sliding in the driver's seat.
Beth falls back into the back seat and says, “Come on Gabe, I gotta eat, and this mess will keep for a couple hours.” He shrugs and slides in the front seat thinking they may help him since they haven't sent him packing yet.
Ten minutes of silence later, Olle pulls into a Cracker Barrel and, once the waitress has walked away with their beverage order, he turns to Gabriel and says, “Where have you been?”
Gabriel is slowly freaking out, worried and angry, so he can't understand how Olle is being so nonchalant about this whole situation. “Does it even matter?” he asks desperately. “The Darkness has been released and you're sitting here waiting on coffee!”
“Every other angel in Creation,” Beth says quietly as the waitress comes up to sit down their drinks, “is fallen.” Gabriel starts at that, taking in a deep breath and looking between the two of them for answers while Beth starts to add Splenda to her cup. As the waitress walks away she continues, “But not you. You're dry aged Kobe in a world of canned cornned beef. Where have you been?” She scoops ice from her water glass into her coffee then takes a sip, waiting, while the angel stares between them.
With a frustrated sigh he answers their question, “I was dead, okay,” he says defensively. “Gone! Until I woke up on the filthy ballroom floor of that hotel where Luci gutted me.” He grabs his hot chocolate and takes a drink before going on, “Best I can figure, that was sunrise. I was disoriented and I spent the first hour just trying to play catch up on everything I've missed these past eight years; and I'm still not sure what's happened!”
Olle says, “Let me catch you up. First off: Sam said 'yes' to your brother and jumped in the pit, dragging Michael with them. Cas freed Sam's body but left his soul, by accident, and Dean was forced to make a deal with Death to get it back. Sam's sanity was protected by Death; however, his protections were later compromised and Sam was lost for a while.”
Gabriel gapes at them, too shocked to really speak while it all sinks in.
“Crowley is the King of Hell,” Beth chimes in.
Gabriel looks like he is about to say something but, instead, his mouth snaps shut with a clink of teeth and Olle smiles saying, “There is a story there for a later day, when we are all together and Crowley can hear it too.”
Gabriel motions for him to continue, so he does, “Raphael intended to gather the angels and lay siege to Hell, break open the Cage and restart the Apocalypse. Crowley and Cas, in an attempt to stop Raphael, conspired to siphon power from the souls in Purgatory, causing Eve to crash the party again.” Gabriel opens his mouth again, about to speak, but Olle stops him, “I still have no idea where your nephew is, but the boys put Eve back where she belongs.”
Gabriel stops trying to interrupt and picks up his hot chocolate again while Olle continues, “Cas double crossed Crowley and, after killing Raphael and trying to become the new God, ended up freeing all the Leviathans.”
The waitress returns and they order before the big man continues, “Three of the tablets and the Keeper of the Word were revealed. Dean and Cas spent a year trapped in Purgatory after sealing away the Leviathans. Sam undertook the Black Trials to shut the Gates of Hell but, when Dean found out Sam had to die, he put a stop to it.”
Olle stops to take a drink so Beth continues, “Metatron was found,” she says his name with a sneer, “and he betrayed everyone by working a spell to cast all the angels out of Heaven. The Keeper of the Word was killed and Metatron has assured no new prophets. Cas spent a little more than a year human, since Metatron used his Grace as the catalyst for the spell, while all the angels fought amongst themselves; the fall out was horrendous.”
Olle goes on from there, “Abadon finally fell out of a closet, literally, so Crowley found Cain. Dean took the Mark from his grandfather and killed Abadon. Metaron used the Angel Tablet to manipulate, pretty much everything and began to attempt to declare himself God, even exposing his newfound abilities to humanity. He killed Dean while Dean still bore the Mark. Metatron's betrayal was revealed, he was captured, and imprisoned. Crowley fled the Men of Letters Bunker with Dean, using the blade to raise him as a demon.”
“What they did those eight months,” Beth says with a shudder, “I don't want to think about.”
Olle glares at her for interrupting but goes on with a smile after she sticks her tongue out at him, “When Deanmon,” Gabriel snickers at that and Olle smiles, mission accomplished, “When he became a liability to Crowley, the King sold his boy toy out to Sam; who cured his brother and set out to find a way to remove the Mark. Cain was perpetrating a purge, which I was more than happy to let him get on with, but Dean cut his head off with the blade.”
“I'll miss him,” Beth says sadly before Olle continues with a nod.
“Using the Book of the Damned, which apparently we didn't hide well enough, and that Nadia bitch's codex, they were, apparently, successful in removing the Mark; thereby releasing your aunt from where your father locked her away.” Olle turns to Beth, “Did I miss anything?”
She shakes her head and says, “Dean finally obliterated the Styne family and killed Death,” as the waitress sits their food down and they all eat in silence while Gabriel tries to let everything he just learned sink in; he knows it will take him weeks to come to terms with all of it.
When he is finished with his pancakes and the waitress has refilled all their glasses, Gabriel looks over at them and says, “We need to get Lucifer out of the cage and leave Michael there. He'll need a vessel and I won't give him Sam!”
Olle looks at Beth, who nods, before he begins to speak. “If I agree to this Gabe, and I'm not saying I will, you have to accept that he could be too far gone to come back. If the disillusion of the Mark hasn't given him back his sanity, and we manage to free him, I'll kill him before I release him on the world.”
“And Gabe,” Beth says gently, “he might be too broken either way.”
“There has to be a way to get him out. I know him, he'll be fine now.” Gabriel sounds more like he needs it to be true than he believes that is how it is.
Beth reaches out and takes his hand in a quick, reassuring squeeze before saying, “We gotta go to Hell then, I guess.”
Gabriel squeezes back and sighs before saying, “There is the Devil's Gate in the Black Forest that opens close to the Cage; it is the one we used to get in and out while we were building it.”
“I remember,” they both say in unison. Gabriel laughs and follows them out to the cashier; he is going to be very amused with two of them around.
Once they return to the car, Olle says, “We have no idea where your aunt is, what Sam and Dean are doing, if they are even still alive, or if this plan of yours to free Lucifer and trap Michael will work. Please tell me you can at least get the gate open without every magickal obstacle we put there to stop anyone from opening the Cage pouring out?”
“Of course I can,” he says more confidently than he actually feels. Being dead, it occurs to him, has really put a damper on his personality. “Now, suit up.”
“How, exactly,” Beth asks with a smile, “did you manage, over the course of the last few hours, to quote The Avengers?”
“I don't like what Marvel did to me,” he says indignity, “I was quoting NPH from How I Met Your Mother.”
“Do you object to the divergence from mythology or the fact they cast a ginger in the part then dyed his hair?” Olle asks.
“That pisses me off!” Beth says. “Tom Hiddleston is beautiful, though, so I can forgive just about anything.”
“We're good to go,” Olle says with a laugh. Beth nods agreement and, with a snap from Gabriel, they're standing in the Black Forest.
“It all offends me,” Gabriel says, “but you're right about Hiddleston. How was the movie?” He starts off through the forest calling behind them, “It's this way.” Olle and Beth follow, all three of them concealing angel blades as they go almost silently through the trees.
After about fifteen minutes they reached Triberg Waterfalls and, pulling his blade, Gabriel leads them into the water and straight back behind the falls, through the rock-face, and into a cavern he had hidden away before Pangaea broke apart. Once inside, they all come up short at the sight of Balthazar, blade at the ready, looking confused and frightened.
“What the hell is going on?” he asks not dropping his guard but looking frantically between his brother and the others. “I've been trapped here for hours and I don't even know where here is!” He looks pointedly at his brother and says, “Gabriel is that you? Jesus Christ, I thought you were dead! What is going on?”
“Balthazar?” Gabriel asks confused. “How did you get here?”
Balthazar puts his blade away with a thought and slumps onto a large rock saying, “The last thing I remember was darling Cassie giving me the shank and then I woke up here hours ago and I couldn't get out. Did Cas do this? You know he's trying to open Purgatory don't you?” He stops and, after giving Beth a silent, appreciative, once over, asks, “Who are they?”
Gabriel sighs, apparently he is not the only one Dad brought back. “You've been dead a while Balthazar,” Gabriel says leaning against the cavern wall. “Years, in fact, apparently; just like me. And, Purgatory is the least of our worries.” Gabriel reaches out to his brother and places a hand on his forehead; Balthazar gasps and Gabriel says, “Naomi did a number on you.” Gabriel begins to glow with the power of his Grace, the air in the cavern becomes static, the enormous shadow of archangel power fills the space, and the earth trembles. Balthazar cries out, reaching both hands out in a vise like grip to his brother's wrist, as his body absorbs Gabriel's power. “There,” Gabriel says pulling his hand away, “you should remember everything she ever took from you.”
“The Darkness,” Balthazar says looking up at his brother slightly terrified.
“I know,” he says with a smirk. “Come on, we need Luci to settle this.” Balthazar nods seriously and everyone follows Gabriel deeper into the earth.
Venturing through the damp cavern, deeper and deeper into the earth, lit fully by an unseen light source, Gabriel stops them at a fissure in the cavern wall at the edge of an underground lake. Protruding from the fissure is an archangel's sword buried to the hilt; it looks much like the blade of a Grigori only larger, like a broadsword.
“Here we go,” Gabriel says. “Once I pull my sword free the door will open and I need one of you,” he gestures to Olle and Beth, “to stay here because you'll be the only one powerful enough, besides an archangel, to open and close the door.” Beth nods at Olle and grabs the hilt with both hands. Everyone else readies their angel blades and, with a nod from Gabriel, Beth pulls the sword free from the rock.
The fissure grows to take on the shape of a ten foot archway, wide enough for the three men to walk through the black void abreast. “Give us an hour, then open the door,” Gabriel says as they all disappear into the void. Beth sinks the four feet of blade into the center of the door and the fissure closes around it once more. She glances at her watch and worries an hour is too long; that is over five days in Hell, and anything could happen. She sinks down next to the wall, angel blade in hand, watchful.