Reunited...Again

Kevin wakes up to a ship horn and he's he finds a sticky note on his face and he hurries out of his room, which was on the boat, and he sticks it with the rest of his notes. Then there's a knock on the door repeatedly.

"Kevin! Come on, open up. It's us." Dean's voice is heard on the other side of the door.

Kevin opens the door, but does not remove the chain.

"Come on man, it's me." Dean says, and Kevin squirts him with holy water.

"Now it's wet me."

"You forgot the knock. What's the point of a secret knock if you don't use it?"

"Sorry Kevin-" Sam comes into the doorway, getting squirted with the water himself.

"We got it."

The door closes and Kevin removes the chain, opening the door back up for well us to walk in.

"Got what?"

"We caught a tip that Crowley was moving up earthside operations so we laid ourselves an awesome trap."

"And it worked."

"We got the other half of the tablet."

"What?"

"It's the light at the end of your tunnel kid. Say we never got you nothing."

"Holy crap. Are you kidding? We can get the third trial. We can finally figure out how to close the gates of hell and Crowley's ass forever."

"Sounds good to me. So we digging up the other half of that thing or what?"

"Don't need to." Kevin motions to his notes and pictures hanging on the wall.

"So uh...Special K, you keep your nose to the god stone. We're gonna drive out, make a lot of noise a long way from here. Keep the safeboat safe for ya."

"We'll be back as soon as we can okay?"

"Seems like he's okay."

"Alright, don't forget to lock up after us." Dean states as we all leave.

We leave the boat and then walk through this forcefield, and turns out it's not us, it's demons disguised as us.

"So it's three trials. Three trials and the Winchesters get to lock the door on me. Hah! You, fake Sam, if you're gonna tip our hand, I'll have to scrub Kevin's short-term memory again and that's risky. So watch the patois in there."

"Patois?"

"Your slang. Special K, nose to the god stone. That's the way Dean speaks. Sam, is....more basic. More sincere. Remember, I want three distinct, authentic characterizations."

"Yes sir."

"I was born to direct."

The real Sam and I were sitting at the map table, him reading a few things and me having lunch, while Dean comes from the kitchen with some food for Sam, something to help him feel better.

"Alright, John Winchester's famous 'Cure All' kitchen sink stew. Here you go. Enough cayenne pepper to burn your lips off. Just like dad used to make. You want me to do the whole airplane thing with the spoon? When's the last time you ate?"

"I don't-"

"Days Sam. It's been three days." Dean states, taking out a mouth thermometer from his pocket.

"Where'd you get that?"

"When'd you start throwing off heat waves? Here..." Dean goes to put the thermometer in his mouth.

"Enough. Dean, please." Sam stops him, removing the blanket from around him and stands, kicking the chair away from him.

"The bloody handkerchief, the fever, the shaky legs, this is not good."

"He's got a point Sam."

"Well I'm not good. And I'm not going to be good, until we can start moving again, until I can start the third trial."

"Trial? I wouldn't let you start a moped. We're on the rails with this thing, okay? And the only way out of it is through it, believe me, I know. And you know how bad I want to slam the door on all those sons of bitches. But you got to let me take care of you man. You've got to let me help you get your strength back."

"This isn't a cold. Or a fever, or whatever it is you're supposed to feed. This is part of it all. Those first two trials, they're not just...things I did. They're doing something to me. They're changing me Dean."

Just then Dean's phone goes off and one of the laptops goes off as well. We all head into the library to check it out.

"It's Kevin."

"Finally."

Dean opens the email that says 'WATCH THIS VIDEO NOW', and he clicks on the link that's providing the video.

Sam, Dean, Brooke, I've set up this message from a remote server so it would send itself to you if I didn't set it with a command once a week. Which means I didn't reset it this week. There's only one reason I wouldn't. Which means if you're watching this then I...I'm dead. I'm dead you bastards! So screw you, screw God, and everyone in between! Crowley must've gotten to me. And the one thing I know is that...I won't break this time. Not sure how I know, but I do. I've been uploading all my notes, translations, I'm sending you the link so you can get all of it. You guys are gonna have to try to figure out the rest. I'm sorry. I know it was my job, but I couldn't...I'm sorry.

And with that the video ends.

"Damn it!" Dean turns around and swipes some books off the table nearby as he leaves the room.

"Dean..." I call after him and follow him out into the other room. "....he can't be dead. Crowley isn't that stupid to kill him right away. He's got to be still alive. He most likely doesn't want to top Crowley off which is why he ditched his research and sent it to us."

"Yeah maybe."

I frown a bit and wrap my arms around him from behind in a hug. I feel him sigh and lean into my touch. Once we get the link, Sam gets to work on printing out all of Kevin's notes, translations, everything.

"Yeah, I know you haven't seen him okay, nobody has. Alright, if you talk to Garth, just have him call in. Yeah."

"Garth still MIA?"

"Yeah."

"How about the other prophets in line? If Kevin is uh....us dead, then won't one of them be activated?"

"Nothing, not a peep. Here we are. No lead, no tablet, squat."

"Well, I mean...we got all this." Sam refers to Kevin's notes.

"We should've moved him here."

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Castiel is sitting in a restaurant, having some coffee and a waitress walks up to him, refilling his mug.

"Guess I've been acquiring the taste."

"Yeah, the coffee's not too bad here."

"You know I remember when you first discovered it. Before you started brewing it, you'd just chew the berries. Folktale is true by the way, you learn it from the goats."

"Been on the road a long time huh?"

"Feels like I've been on the run forever."

"Um...I'm sorry Mister, but you're gonna have to order more than coffee if you want to keep the table."

"Of...of course. Um...I'll have the Smart Heart Beer-Battered Tempura Tempters."

"Of course. Coming right up."

Just then there's this ringing and rumbling.

"They're getting closer."

"What's that chief?" One of the waiters ask, to see that Cas is gone. "I swear to god Lance, the guy just disappeared." He says once he gets a fellow employee's attention, and that's when two angels show up.

"You on the crack again Perry?" The guy asks and the angels disappear to Heaven.

"Ion, tell me you have good news." Naomi demands.

"He's using a clever tactic. It's a restaurant called BIGgersons. The humans built hundreds of them, almost exactly alike."

"What are you talking about?"

"It's their same-ness. Castiel is using it against us. Now we try to orient ourselves, but it's as if we're at every BIGgerson's at once. Trapped in a quantum super position. Now he chooses which to go to next. That's what's giving him the edge."

"You're saying that you can't catch him?"

"There's just so many BIGgersons."

"Very well. You say he can't be caught? Then we'll simply have to make him stop."

Back with the three of us, were looking over Kevin's notes, seeing if we could figure out what the third trial was.

"Huh. There it is again, every time."

"What?" I ask.

"This symbol? I know it. Now Kevin has it down as some sort of signature for the scribe of God and it appears every time Metatron makes one of his editor's notes."

"Okay."

"Go on."

"But I think I've seen it before. I mean it was a long time ago, it was one of my uh..humanity courses at Stanford."

"They taught word of God at Stanford?"

"No uh...it was an overview of native American art. I think it's petroglyph."

"A petro-what now?"

"Aha." Sam says, putting the book down on the table. "The symbol belonged to a tiny group in Colorado, a clan really. It says here they held onto their scrap of mountains when all the other tribes fell to the white man. So this glyph was a territorial marker, the translation being messenger of God. Messenger of God. Messenger of God, Dean...Brooke, we have to go there."

"On that hunch? You can barely function."

"He's right Sam, you're not at your best right now."

"I'm only gonna get worse. I mean until I get back to the real job, and until we find the third trial, we're out of prophets. We're not gonna figure out what Kevin couldn't. I say we go to this messenger of God who wrote it in the first place."

"And you think that this Metatron is hiding out in the mountains with a bunch of Indians?"

"Yeah, yeah I do. You're not...you're not really supposed to say Indians. It's....we should go."

"You're delirious." Dean states as we head to our rooms to pack some things.

Bangor, Maine

Lincoln, Nebraska

Reno, Nevada

Tucson, Arizona

Santa Fe, New Mexico

That's where Castiel stops moving from one BIGgerson's to another. He notices blood everywhere and everyone dead.

"You have to stop."

Cas looks over to see the waitress with her eyes burned out of her head.

"They said you have to stop."

"No."

"They said you have to stop."

"No."

"Stop. you have to stop."

"No."

"You have to stop."

He goes to heal her, but the angels that were looking for him appear and hold the angel killing knife to his throat.

"They said you have to stop. You have to stop."

Route 34, Colorado

The three of us had pulled up to this hotel, that had a beautiful view of the mountains. We park and head in, hoping to get a room.

"Nice place." Dean remarks and we walk up to the service desk and Dean rings the bell.

"Morning, hi. Uh we'd like a room? Here. Please."

Sam goes walking off just to look around while Dean signs in the book.

"Did you hear that?"

"Hear what? He has the flu." Dean tells the man at the desk.

Meanwhile with Cas and the other two angels, Naomi had come to them.

"You have to stop. You have to stop." The waitress says before Naomi snaps her neck with a snap of her fingers.

"Can't hear myself think."

"We were supposed to be their Shepards, not their murderers." Cas remarks.

"Not always angel. There was that day back in Egypt, not so long ago. Where we slew every first born infant who's door wasn't splashed with lamb's blood. And that was just PR."

"Well I wasn't there."

"Oh, you were there. You just don't remember it."

"How...how many times have you torn into my head and washed it clean?"

"Frankly, too damn many." She snaps her fingers and a chair slides over to her and she sits. "You're the famous spanner in the works. Honestly, I think you came off the line with a crack in your chassy. You have never done what you were told. Not completely. You don't even die right do you? Where is the angel tablet Castiel?"

"In the words of a good friend, bite me."

"Oh we'll bite. Don't worry. Go. Search all these...BIGgersons. He must've hidden it along the way."

With Kevin and the fake us, he was translating the tablet while fake Sam and fake me were researching and fake Dean was pacing back and forth drinking a beer.

"I can barely see. I need food." Kevin remarks.

Fake Dean nods and then all three of fake us, head out.

"Alright, barbecue ribs, mashed potatoes-"

"Garlic mashed potatoes."

"Garlic mashed potatoes, mixed greens with baby lettuce, corn bread and pate."

"Garth says there's a nice little place on the other side of town."

"What the hell, kid's been working hard."

"Those guys aren't half bad."

"No sir, you chose well."

"Of course if I wasn't running everything, I could've played Dean myself."

"Oh, you would've made a great Dean sir."

Sam and I were in the hotel room, and I could see that he was getting worse by the hour. He started to just start to lose it, telling me stories and whatnot. That is until Dean come back from doing some research.

"Regular tourist mecca we got here. We're the only guests in this whole place. Last entry in the registry was in '06."

"Hey, you remember when uh...when dad took us to the bottom of the Grand Canyon on that pack mule ride?"

"The what?"

"And your uh...your mule kept farting...just...letting go like gale force?"

"Dude you were like 4 years old, I barely remember that."

"Hahahaha. You rode a farty donkey."

I can't help but to laugh a bit myself.

"Okay, I'm gonna go check out the Two Rivers travel museum and trading post."

"Yeah...yeah,I’m gonna follow the hotel manager, Dr. Scowly Scowl. He’s like a villain from Scooby Doo.”

"No...hey little big man, you are gonna stay here with Brooke and get some rest."

"Yeah I can do that too." Sam states, falling back onto the bed.

"You watch him. Anything happens, please...call me."

"I will. Sam is like a brother to me too you know. The brother I never had."

He then leans down and kisses me quick before he heads out to go to that travel museum and trading post.

"The people of the Two Rivers tribe, came to this land centuries ago. Land that was harsh and stony. But their mighty leader told these people that they must stay here. He claimed that this was the home on earth for the great spirits' sacred messenger. And that if they made offerings, their blessings would be many."

"What were the offerings? Uh...what were the great spirits' sacred messenger ask for?"

"Stories. He asked the people to tell them stories."

Dean looks around and finds a picture and one man stands out to him....he looks exactly like the hotel manager we saw when we checked in.

"I bet I know what the blessings were."

Sam in the meantime, had started to move from his bed and head out to the hallway.

"Sam!" I call after him and get up following him. "Sam!" I call to him in a hushed tone as he continues down the hall. "Damn it." I curse as I close the door and follow close behind him.

The elevator doors open and then Sam and I both hide, looking around the corner to see the hotel manager dropping off boxes in front of a door of what's suppose to be an empty room. Once the manager is gone, we go over and Sam opens a box, revealed to be books inside. That's when Sam starts to act even weirder and he hurries back to our room.

"Sam? Are you okay?" I ask as he bursts into our room.

I shut the door as he takes his phone out, dialing Dean and just then he collapses.

"Sam!" I drop to the floor next to him, trying to get him to wake up.

"Sam?" I hear from his phone.

"Dean?" I say into the phone once I pick it up from the floor.

"Brooke...what's wrong? What's happening?"

"It's Sam, Dean. He's collapsed and he's not responding. He's burning up too. I think his fever is worse."

"Damn it Sam. Alright this is what we're gonna do. We're gonna force this fever out of him. Go start the tub and fill it with cold water. I'm going to pick up ice on my way back. I'll be there as fast as I can."

"Alright." I nod before hanging up and head into the bathroom to do so.

In the meantime, Naomi was still trying to figure out where Cas hid the angel tablet. The angel who left to find the tablet had returned.

"I've been all over them, it's not there."

"Why? Why are you doing this? Let us put the tablet back where it should be."

"I need to protect it."

"From the angels?"

"From all of us."

"I'm just going to have to pull you apart won't I?"

And just then there's a gunshot and one of the angels is killed. The other one is shot, but not killed. The man who shot them was revealed to be Crowley.

"Naomi, darling, miss me?"

Dean had come back to the hotel as fast as he can and rushed up to the room. Sam was still passed out on the floor and I had the tub filled with cold water. Dean rushed into the bathroom and started emptying the bags of ice into the water. Once all the bags were empty, we helped Sam off the floor and dropped him into the water, waiting for him to come to and the fever to go down. It took a few moments, but he woke up, gasping for air and freezing cold.

"Just take it easy. You were passed out on the floor. Your temperature was 107, we had to force it down, before you were toast." Dean explains as he wraps a towel around him.

"He's here guys. Metatron is here. I know, I can hear him."

"What are you talking about?"

"All I know...is that I'm connected to it somehow."

"What, like you got a link to him, like a prophet?"

"I don't know, I just know he's here. Metatron is here."

"Okay, here where?"

"I can show you. I can show you. The manager, he was delivering books to him."

"Books?"

"Books. Hardcovers, paperbacks, novels, books."

"Stories."

"Do you like it?" Crowley asks about his gun. "I had my R&D people melt down one of your angel blades. Casted into bullets. Seems to do the trick."

"How dare you?"

"I'm the daring-est devil you've ever met love."

Naomi goes all white light on him and he points the gun at her.

"We've been there before haven't we? Let's see who blinks first." He shoots and she disappears before she can get shot.

"Hi Cas. That's right Cas. I got me an angel under payroll. It's that kind of universe these days." He then shoots Cas, but he doesn't die.

"Now, grab him and follow me."

With fake us again and Kevin, he's still hard at work trying to translate the 2nd half of the tablet.

"Kid, you okay?" Fake Dean asks.

"I can't. It's the break in the stone. There's key writing I can't make it out. You guys were right. I do need the other half of the tablet to read the trial. It's not too far from here."

"Awesome...uh...what's the 10-20?"

"Just wanted to take a moment away from the main action. To chat with my old business partner. I assume you won't die just yet. Takes a painful long time to bleed out from the gut."

"You can do whatever you want Crowley, I will never tell you where I buried the tablet."

"I know Cas, I know. Luckily, I don't believe you. I've been getting regular updates from my expensive friend here. Naomi should have caught you out of the gate, as she has lately been knuckles deep in the melon of yours. She thinks that your touching the tablet has broken her spell over you."

"The tablets weren't meant for the angels and they weren't meant for you."

"She's got a lot on her plate, so you can't fault her for missing it. I'm thinking to myself, self...if Cas got away from her by touching the tablet, why would he ever stop touching the tablet. And then I thought to myself, self...he hasn't stopped touching the tablet now has he?"

He then digs into the bullet hole and ends up pulling out the tablet.

"Oh you're a bit pure. What? Oh.." Crowley says, answering his phone. "This is the king."

"The kid told us where the other half was, but it wasn't. Dab of crap tricked us. Sent us into some kind of hunter mousetrap."

"You jackasses, you're ruining my streak. Watch him. I'll be right back."

We waiting until Sam was okay enough to do whatever, and until he was dry and warm. That's when he decided that we should go check out the room where all the books were outside the door down the hall.

"We should be taking you to the ER."

"They can't do anything for me. You know, I've been remembering things. Little things so clearly."

"What donkey rides?"

"You use to read to me. Uh..when I was little. I mean really little. From the old classics illustrated comic book, you remember that?"

"No."

"Nights of the Round Table. It had all of King Arthur's Knights, and they were all on the quest for the holy grail. And I remember looking at this picture at Sir Al-Hatim and he was kneeling and light streaming over his face and I remember....thinking um...I could never go on a quest like that. Because....I'm not clean. I mean I was just a little kid. You think maybe I knew. I mean deep down that I had demon blood in me and about the evil of it and then I wasn't pure."

"Sam it's not your fault."

"It doesn't matter anymore. Because these trials....they're purifying me. They were here. The books, the boxes...they're gone."

Dean pushes on the door and it opens and we take it upon ourselves to walk in. There are books everywhere and when we come out to a clearing where there are chairs, there's a gun pointed at us.

"Who are you?" The man asks us.

"Metatron. This is Metatron?" Dean questions.

"Sit down." He says as he appears behind us and we sit in the chairs near us.

"Who sent you?"

"We came on our own. We're the Winchesters." Sam starts.

"I'm Dean, this is Sam and this is Brooke."

"You work for Michael? Or Lucifer?"

"You really haven't heard of us? What kind of angel are you? We're the freaking Winchesters."

Meanwhile, Cas is still being watched by the angel who was hired by Crowley.

"How far can this go?"

"Shut up."

"Ion, how far can we let it all drop? This charge was left to us as our mission."

"Do you even know what the mission was? They've been in all our heads."

"We aren't machines for them to program and to reprogram. That wasn't what this was meant to be."

"Nothing matters."

"You are so wrong brother. It all matters." Cas states, removing the bullet from his stomach.

Crowley however has gotten to Kevin and he kicks the door in, Kevin sitting there are his table calm as can be, eating.

"You little prat. You having fun yet?"

"Screw you."

"Am I seeing this? How'd you figure it out?"

"It started when they forgot the secret knock. Really, it was the way they acted. I don't think on their best day Sam and Dean would go into town and get me a barbecue dinner, not when there's leftover burritos in the fridge."

"So...my demons were too polite?"

"Yeah."

"Well I'll be a son of a whore."

"Michael and Lucifer? Those...those dudes are in the deep fryer." Dean explains to Metatron.

"Yeah, we put them there ourselves." Sam adds.

"What about Gabriel? And Rafael?"

"Dead."

"You really don't know this?"

"I've been very careful."

"Hey can you...can you turn that down?"

"Turn what down....ohhh you're resonating."

"Resonating? What do you mean resonating?"

"You've undertaken the trials. You're trying to pull one of the great levers aren't you? You're pretty far along too. You get that far along, you start resonating with the word. Or with it's source on the material plane. With me."

"You said you were being careful. Careful how?"

"I'm not one of them. I'm not an archangel. Really more run of the mill. I worked in the secretarial pool before God chose me to take down the word. Anyway, he...seemed very worried about his work, what would happen to it when he left, so he had me write down instructions. Then...he was gone. After that, the archangels took over. They cried and they wailed, they wanted their father back. I mean, we all did. But then...then they started to scheme. The archangels decided if they couldn't have dad, they'd take over the universe themselves. But they couldn't do anything that big without the word of God. So I began to realize maybe they would realize...they needed me."

"So you...get a ruffle in your feathers and then just decide to disappear? Go stick your head in the sand forever? You have no idea what's been going on out there."

"Nope. That's the whole point."

"You soldiers down in the garrison. At least they let you believe the lies. Upstairs, working for Naomi, working in intelligence, we had no option but to live in the dirt. She never reset me completely. I always knew too much. I had to...I had to do my job." Ion explains back at BIGgersons.

"Ion." Cas states, having gotten up from the chair. "Shut up." He adds, knocking him down and putting the bullet through his eye.

"So you have been hold up here or in a wigwam or some cave, listening to stories, reading books?" Dean asks.

"And it was something to watch. What you brought to his Earth. All the mayhem, the murder, just the raw, wild invention of God's naked apes, it was mind blowing. But really, really it was your story telling. That is the true flower of free will. At least...as you've mastered it so far. When you create stories, you become Gods of tiny intricate dimensions under themselves. So many worlds. I have read as much as it's possible for an angel to read and I haven't caught up."

"You know what? Pull the friggen trigger." Sam states.

"Sam, what are you doing?" I question.

"What?"

"Pull the friggen trigger you cowardly piece of garbage. All the time you've been hiding here. How much suffering have you read over? Humanity suffering. And how much of it has been at the hands of your kind?"

Dean steps in and backs Sam off and I help keep him back.

"You want a story? Try Kevin Tran's...story. He was just a kid. He was a good straight 'A' kid and then he got sucked in to all of this...this angel crap and became a prophet of the word of God. YOUR prophet. Now you should've been looking out for him, but no. Instead you're here, hold up, reading books."

"He's dead now. Because of you."

"You know the Winchesters are up to the third trial. They're gonna shut the door on Hell." Kevin states oh so calmly to Crowley.

"I'm not worried kid."

"You have no idea what's on this demon tablet. The power you could've gotten with this, if you weren't running around like a chicken with it's head cut off."

"You think I can't make you tell?"

"I know you can't, and you do too."

"You know what? I've already won. I have the angel tablet, you little smudge. And I don't...need....you." Crowley states, grabbing Kevin by the throat.

And just then, everything glows white and Kevin's gone, Crowley was burned and thrown across the room. And just like that, Kevin is with us and Metatron heals him.

"Is that it? Is he good?"

"Give him a minute."

"How did you get past Crowley's angel warding?"

"I'm the scribe of God, I erased it."

"But you saw right? I mean you...you're caught up on everything that's been going on. All the crap that's been done to humanity all this time?"

"I saved the boy didn't I?"

"But are you in....with us I mean."

"You really intend of closing the doors of Hell?"

"Seems like the thing to do don't it?"

"It's your choice. I mean that's what this has been about. The choices your kind make. But you're gonna have to weigh that choice. Ask yourself, what is it going to take to do this. And what will the world be like after it's done."

"Dean?" Sam calls.

"Dean!" I call louder, and then he and Metatron come over, because Kevin is awake.

"Kevin? Hey. Thought we lost you kiddo."

"I got....the second half of the tablet. I got it..third trial. I didn't tell Crowley."

"So what is it?"

"To cure a demon." Metatron states.

"Yeah. Who are you?"

We end up leaving Kevin with Metatron and by nightfall, we leave the hotel.

"Cure a demon? Okay, knowing a fact that I don't know what that actually means, if we do this, you get better right? You stop trying to cough up a lung and bumping into furniture."

"I hope so." I nod.

"I feel better, yeah. I'm...just having a direction to move in."

"Well good, cause where we're heading doesn't sound like a picnic."

"But we're heading somewhere. The end."

Just then Dean slams on the brakes and we come to a screeching stop.

"What is it?!" I exclaim and get out with him and Dean.

"Cas?!"

"A little help here."