Title: The Curse of Bittersweet Kisses
Chapter 17

~~~~~~~~~~

It put a crimp in Meg’s plan that Castiel had gone and died on her before she could offer him her services as Crowley’s replacement and convince him to make her the ruler of hell. She’d planned to show him how faithful she was to him by being here in his church, a way of letting him know she’d support whatever endeavor he took on. She’d even planned to claim to have turned her adoration from Lucifer to him if he really wanted to know.

But no, the idiot had to get himself killed and by the Colt if she’d seen correctly from her place in the audience. Probably under Crowley’s orders.

Her hands clenched into fists as she looked down at the body of his vessel. What a waste. She’d looked forward to eventually corrupting him further.

Crowley needed to die and soon. He’d been messing up her plans for years.

An overly anguished sob distracted her from her thoughts and she suppressed an irritated sigh.

“I don’t know what to do!”

If Constance wailed that one more time, Meg was going to punch her. Instead, she plastered a kind expression on her face and reached out, pulling Constance into a hug. “It’s okay. We’ll get through this together, Connie.”

She’d spent weeks inserting herself into the woman’s life and becoming her newest best friend. Keeping out of the media had been a challenge considering what a media whore Constance was, but she’d done it. She hadn’t wanted to alert Castiel of her presence here too soon, nor had she made any move to antagonize the Winchesters or Jo and Ellen Harvelle. Meg had been a very good girl for weeks, so good that her status as a demon might as well be revoked. She’d been so good she was almost human again. She’d had her moment planned with Castiel and then…poof. It was all gone.

Son of a bitch, she thought.

“How can he be gone? He’d agreed to meet you. We were making plans for another baptism here in three weeks. I’d talked to him about expansion of the church again. We….” She drew in a choking breath. “We had a connection!”

She patted Constance’s back. “There, there.” Behind Constance’s back, she rolled her eyes. Connection her ass. Meg had more of a connection with Castiel than Constance did, the stupid cow. “He is with us. Remember that. As long as we carry him in our hearts, he’ll never leave us.” It was the same drivel Constance prattled on about at every service, but seemed to calm the woman.

“He’s a part of all of us. Praise him!” Constance clung to her. “Margaret, can I tell you something?” She drew back, glance falling to Castiel’s body.

“Of course you can. You know that, Connie. You can tell me anything.”

“I feel a little silly, but….” She stretched out a hand and touched Castiel’s cheek. “I wonder about those two women he saw. Who they were. What were they to him? They meant something, I know they did, but he didn’t want me searching for them and approaching them. He told me to drop it and forget about them.” Her hand moved down to where his shirt was parted, faltered, then touched his chest. She caressed the spot. The bullet wounds were gone and Meg wondered if that meant anything. “Why? Do you think they’re his family? Should I find them and give my condolences? I mean, as head of his church, I should do something, right? I just want to make sure they’re okay and have everything they need as we…they grieve for their loss.”

Meg about laughed. Who did she think she was fooling with this act? “Don’t feel silly for caring about others. It’s a selfless thing to worry more for others than yourself.”

“I know. I just can’t get them out of my mind. How lost they must feel without him.”

Jo and Ellen Harvelle were a source of great frustration to Constance. Castiel had forbidden her to look for them under the threat of losing her place in the church, a threat she took seriously since she liked her status. He’d refused to allow Constance anything to do with them. Meg had been tempted to tell her several times that Jo and Ellen were in Sioux Falls right under her nose, but she hadn’t due to her own agenda with Castiel. Most people had forgotten about Jo and Ellen and Meg was pretty sure Castiel had worked some god magic to make that happen, something similar to what some of the angels had done over the years.

“Let me see what I can find out for you,” Meg told her. “But right now, we need to go pick out some fresh clothes for him. Something nice.” What Constance would say if she knew her god wasn’t as wonderful as she thought he was; if she knew he’d worked with demons on a regular basis; that he’d torn open Purgatory to attain his level of power. Would she still want him then?

Constance lifted her hand from Castiel’s chest. “You’re right. Clean clothes and we should have his coat cleaned before he’s put in the case for viewing.” She stepped back and grasped Meg’s hand. “What would I have ever done without you, Margaret? You’ve been my lifeline.”

“I’m just trying to help. The servant’s life, you know.”

She took a last glance back at Castiel and the missed opportunities there, but maybe she could do something with the church he was leaving behind. It had terrific potential to be shaped however Meg wished if she played her cards right.

~~~~~~~~~~

Bobby Singer waited in his car for Sheriff Jody Mills to arrive. They’d agreed to meet nearly half an hour earlier and he was beginning to worry something else had happened. He glanced at his watch, then saw a car approaching.

He expected her to pull up beside him and open the window, but this time she didn’t. She drove past, turned around, and parked behind him, getting out and coming to his door. At her invitation to join her out if the vehicle, he did, closing the door as softly as possible and leaning against it.

Jody looked exhausted. There were dark shadows under her eyes and a drawn, pinched look around her mouth, like she’d had to deal with too many idiots in too short an amount of time. She leaned beside him. “What a night.”

“Worse than usual,” he agreed.

“I’ve got a whole town of fanatical nut bags wanting to lynch my two perps, who I’ve just gotten notice disappeared from lockup along with the two guns, and a kooky church who won’t let the morgue do their job with the body of their god.”

“Probably best they don’t do their job. Castiel ain’t exactly human.”

“So I’ve gathered.”

He studied the field across from them, then turned his attention up and down the road. There were no cars approaching, only the sounds of tree branches brushing together in the breeze. “I take it you’re not a member of the Church of Castiel?”

“Are you kidding? They’re a little too cult-y for my taste. I keep expecting them to lock themselves in that church and start drinking Kool-Aid.” She crossed her arms with a weary sigh. “They’re breaking laws right and left and I can’t do a thing about it. I’ve as much been told that unless I convert or give them preferential treatment, I’ll be out of a job soon. Isn’t that a nice reward for serving this city? I’ve done more here for the good of the people than my predecessor.”

He let her go on, getting her frustrations out until she fell silent with a sigh. “I hate to ask,” he began.

Jody laughed, the sound exhausted and a little punch drunk. “Go on. I know this Castiel thing is right up your alley.”

“He really dead?”

“As a doornail. I had to give a police escort to get the body across to the morgue. Connie Turco insisted. She went with the body like she was his wife or something and one of her friends tagged along. Connie said she had to make sure he was treated with the proper respect due to him. Then she said she wants a meeting with me this morning to discuss the police presence at the viewing of the body and a couple other side matters.” She snorted. “Man, I do not want to get out of bed in the mornings these days. My own people are converting and letting things slide.”

“A police presence might be a good idea.” All sorts of things could happen though if all the things Castiel had pissed off the past few months knew the body was here. There could be a ton of trouble headed their way already. “Then again, who knows what’s gonna come after his body. Could be best you just ignore that request.”

Jody shook her head. “I don’t need this. And I don’t need Connie or her ideas. Since she’s gotten involved in this church, she’s gotten weirder than she already was.”

“You’re sure he’s dead, though?”

“Paramedics said so, doctor said so, coroner said so. If that’s all you want to know, that’s an easy question to answer. I could have told you that over the phone.”

“Thanks, Sheriff.”

“Sure, Bobby. Take care of yourself,” she said, pushing to stand up straight. “This is a strange world these days.”

“Don’t have to tell me that.”

He waited until she’d driven off before getting in the car and heading for home. Maybe Dean, Sam, and Jo would be back and he could give them the news.

~~~~~~~~~~

By the time they arrived back at Bobby’s, Dean was shaking. It wasn’t only his hands, but his whole body. All the way back, he’d kept thinking that it couldn’t be real. Sam and Jo felt the same and their conversation hadn’t left the topic once.

He hurried into the house, leaving Jo and Sam to catch up. Ellen was there and Bobby wasn’t. “I need to know if this is real, Ellen. Is it real?”

She covered the mouthpiece of one phone with a hand. “We all need to know, sweetie. We’re working on it, but the church packed everything down tight pretty quick. I couldn’t even get in near the church at all. Barely got past the edge of town.”

Dean was afraid to get his hopes up. It hadn’t even been twelve hours and he still expected Castiel to appear there with them and say something like how he’d grown tired of the church and thought dying would disband it. Or that he was tired of being God and could they hide him for awhile until things cooled off? Something silly like that, only this wasn’t silly. Reports of his death were everywhere. “Where’s Bobby?”

“Went out to see if he could meet the sheriff.” She turned her attention back to the phone. “Yes, I’m still here.”

Jo and Sam came in, Sam immediately dropping his bag, setting up the laptop, and getting to work. Jo brought in their things and Dean belatedly realized he should have helped her. She waved away his concern about that.

“I can get this. You’ve got other things on your mind.”

She took their bags upstairs and Dean began to pace. His heartbeat wouldn’t slow down and he couldn’t stand still.

A car came down the drive and stopped. Bobby came in. He took in their worried expressions and said, “Sheriff confirms he’s dead. Paramedics, doctors, and the coroner all said so. Ain’t no doubt about it. No life left in that body.”

The pronouncement should have made him relax and didn’t. It wasn’t right. In his gut, he knew it wasn’t right.

During the first twenty-four hours after the assassination, Castiel had been declared dead to the world, his two assassins had disappeared, and his body had been cleaned up and placed in a special glass case for viewing. The world was invited to come to Sioux Falls and pay their respects.

Dean felt numb. This had to be a cruel trick being played on them because Castiel had had God-like powers. A bullet shouldn’t have killed him. He kept replaying that scene on the television over and over in his mind.

“It can’t be real.” Sam looked up from the laptop. “I keep thinking it has to be a hallucination I’m having.” He sorted some papers from the right of the laptop to the left, then made a notation on one of them.

“Why can’t it be real,” Ellen asked. She’d woken from a late nap, but seemed ready to fall back asleep any second. Like the rest of them, she’d been up all night and most of the day. Probably they should convince her to go to bed.

“Because we’ve been kicked in the teeth too many times. It’s too easy.” Sam shrugged, like it should have been obvious.

It was obvious to Dean, but then, he’d lived the same events Sam had for the most part. “He was God, gets shot a few times and he’s down? That make sense to you, Ellen? It doesn’t to me. Not to mention that if a gun could have killed him all this time, why didn’t we bother trying it?”

“Our luck’s gotta turn sometime,” she replied, smothering a yawn.

Sam laughed. “Um…Ellen? Have we met? I’m Sam,” he gestured to himself, then Dean, “and this is my brother Dean. We’re pretty much always waiting for the other crap covered shoe to drop.”

“You know it, bro.” Dean saluted him with his whiskey glass.

“He ain’t so much as twitched, boys.”

“We’ll see.”

They kept the TV on and attempted to play cards, but none of them paid much attention to the games. One by one, they went to bed until it was Dean left sitting alone in front of the television. He poured another drink and flipped channels. On one local channel, Constance Turco was talking about how there would be changes to the church after Castiel was entombed. She had far-reaching, global plans for ministry that she claimed Castiel had left with her before he’d died. Somehow, Dean didn’t think that was the truth. Constance had her own plans.

“You coming to bed?”

He looked up. Jo was in the doorway in her pajamas. “I was considering it.”

Coming forward, she turned off the TV. “It’ll all either still be real in the morning or it won’t be. You have to sleep, Dean.” She gestured at Sam. “Even Sam is sleeping.”

Sam had passed out with the laptop on the coffee table and a pile of papers and books on his lap and around him. His head was tipped back, his mouth open, and he was snoring every so softly. Getting up, Dean closed the laptop, gathered up the papers and books and set them aside before shaking him enough to get him to lie down. Gently, he placed a blanket over him. Sam sighed and snuggled down further, pressing his face into the pillow. Dean moved back to Jo. “Okay. Let’s go to bed.”

He didn’t sleep well and spent the next day in a state of constant tension. Even Jo couldn’t work the knots from his shoulders and back and she spent over an hour trying. Dean simply couldn’t relax. He was afraid to believe that Castiel was gone because if he was gone from a simple bullet, they could have gotten rid of him as a threat a long time ago. Much of what had happened could have been averted and, if that was the case, he began to feel the beginnings of guilt that they hadn’t even tried to shoot him.

Jo gave his shoulders a last squeeze and swung off of him. “Your back is a lost cause. Every time I get one knot, another shows up somewhere else. I’ll try again in a day or two.”

“Thanks.”

She handed him his shirt as he sat up. “Here. You really think he’s not dead?”

“I don’t know what to think, Jo. Part of me is so ready to just get past him and the other part…. I don’t know,” he repeated. “The other part can’t believe it could be true, that he’s gone, and we don’t have to look over our shoulders anymore.” He pulled the shirt on and added, “Any more than usual anyway.”

“It’s been two days.”

“I know.” He nodded. “Everyone says he’s dead. No pulse, no brain activity. Dead, dead, dead. Guess I’m having a hard time believing it.”

Dinner was stew Ellen had made to keep herself busy in between fielding calls from hunters around the world. Sam had taken a break from whatever project he was working on to slide frozen biscuits into the oven for her and Bobby stopped taking calls long enough to eat a bowl of stew. As soon as that bowl was done, he was back at the phones, telling people he didn’t know what the truth was, but yes, it looked like a bullet had killed Castiel.

For the most part, Jo had been quiet, not saying much at all about Castiel’s death since they’d returned to the house. She kept them moving forward, Dean could see that as he either sat in a chair or paced. She brought all of them coffee, water, or iced tea and made sure they never ran out. She got the laundry that had piled up from their trip done and put away, tidied the kitchen around Ellen and Bobby, and slid a new pad of paper beneath a distracted Sam’s pen before he’d started writing on Bobby’s desk. Every so often, she’d stop her whirlwind of activity long enough press a kiss to Dean’s cheek or forehead or squeeze his shoulder with one hand. Jo was the silent support they needed to get through the day.

He grasped her arm as she went by him. “Jo, wait a second.”

“Yeah?”

“You don’t have to do this all day. The laundry, the picking up. You’re not a maid.”

“Who else is going to? Mom and Bobby are taking the phones, Sam’s working on the videos, and you’re trying to get your head around it all. What else is there for me to do but try to get us all through this to the other side? If that means I be a maid for awhile, it’s okay. The goal is to get though it all.”

She had a point and he let her go back to whatever her next task was. With a long sigh, he changed channels on television to the local station and waited for the latest broadcast. A little after ten, the program came on.

The music was dramatic, the anchor puffy eyed and pale. “A world in mourning.” Her voice was thick and husky from her own mourning. They showed several screens from all around the world of people crying. “For a large number of people in this world, the death of Castiel has either shaken their faith or made it stronger. We’ve had a number of stories since his death Tuesday night, just two nights ago, discussing both views. How could God die from a bullet?”

“That’s what I’m asking,” Dean murmured.

“Stay with us tomorrow as we delve deeper into the theological implications of his death. We’re also providing live coverage of the visitation for those who can’t be with us here in Sioux Falls. His body is on display for the next week, after which he’ll be buried in an undisclosed location at the expense of his church.” She turned a page in front of her. “One mourner said that he doesn’t look like a corpse at all. He looks…as if he’s simply asleep.”

Slowly, Dean leaned back. Two days down. He wondered if he would still be counting days a year from now, waiting for that shoe Sam had mentioned. Relief was trying to grab a foothold inside him, but he was still afraid to let it grow.

“Do you think they embalmed him,” Jo asked, resting her hands on her hips.

Bobby shook his head. “Doubt it. Sheriff said they wouldn’t let the morgue do their job. Stands to reason they wouldn’t let him be embalmed either.”

“Bet the inside of that glass case smells pretty ripe right about now.” She wrinkled her nose as if smelling that scent in the room.

Jo’s observation, said in a matter-of-fact tone, brought a snicker from Dean before he could stop it. He covered his mouth with a hand, smothering another burble of slightly hysterical sounding laughter.

She shrugged, ignoring his outburst of laughter. “Just sayin’. There’s a reason bodies get chemicals shot through them after death. They had to have done something to preserve him for the week though, right? Otherwise they’d be trying to say goodbye with this rotting corpse in a glass case.”

“Unless his body was completely changed and stayed that way. Like the victims of the purgatory demons.” Sam answered her without looking up from the laptop and Dean made a mental note to get up from the chair later and look at what he was researching.

Jo moved to perch on the arm of Dean’s chair. “I wonder whose idea it was to have the glass case. Doesn’t that just scream Sleeping Beauty and a whole slew of other fairy tales?”

Now that she’d mentioned it, it did.

“Constance probably has dreams of opening the case, kissing him, and bringing him back to life with the power of her kiss,” Bobby murmured. “She’s nutty that way.”

“If you’d heard her talk at that one service I went to….” Ellen stretched. “She’s definitely the type.” She got up, grabbed the bottle of whiskey Dean had been working his way through and poured them all a single shot at the kitchen table. “Get in here. All of you.” Once they were in the kitchen, she raised her shot. “To the angel he once was. Things changed, but he was an ally at one time. We should honor that even as we’re glad he’s not a threat anymore.”

Bobby nodded. “She’s right. He was a good ally before he got desperate and corrupted. Maybe one shot?”

Dean shook his head, pulled out a chair and sat. “I can’t.”

Slowly, Sam curled his fingers around his glass and raised it. “I will. He was an ally. He did help us with Lucifer. I’ll drink one shot to that. Anything after that is toasting the fact he’s gone.” He downed it, put the glass down, and got up, leaving the kitchen and returning to his work.

Jo tossed her shot back without saying a word. Putting an arm around Dean, she leaned over and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “I’m going to bed,” she whispered.

Bobby and Ellen drank their shots at the same time leaving only Dean’s left and he shook his head again with stubborn refusal. When everyone had gone to bed, Dean stared at the shot. He sighed, the tendrils of relief slowly moving through him turning to sadness as first one hour, then two passed. Leaning forward, he put his head in his hands.

“Cas, you dumb son of a bitch,” he muttered.

He could have healed Sam and Dean would have eventually forgiven him, but he hadn’t. He’d insisted he couldn’t because he thought Sam betrayed him. He’d thrown tantrums and behaved like the child Dean had once called him. He’d insisted he wanted Dean happy, then given him Jo and Ellen. He’d continued to claim he couldn’t heal Sam and now he’d gotten himself killed.

Was he really dead? Murdered? It seemed strange to consider a world without Castiel at all and he really did expect him to appear in the room with them. Dean thought back over their relationship, going over past ground that he’d been ignoring these months.

Castiel had been an angel of God, a soldier who’d risked himself in a siege on hell to raise Dean from it. At the time, he’d been a scary thing to contemplate because of what angels as a whole meant. It meant there was more than Dean had thought and while he’d later learned things that negated a lot of that fear, he’d had some fear inside him.

Next, the angel had become horrified to learn what his brothers and sisters were doing and how unholy they were behaving. In a short period of time, Castiel had become an ally and then a friend. Hunters didn’t usually have too many friends and Castiel had counted among that number.

Dean sat back, hands dropping into his lap.

He couldn’t ignore what Castiel had once been. He’d been an ally and friend far longer than he’d been a enemy and they were right. He should honor that…but it was just so damn hard to get past the last few months.

“Why’d you take the easy way,” he whispered. “Demons are bad business and you dealt with Crowley? Crowley? Tainted souls, purgatory souls. Did you really have no idea it’d go sour? In all your angel life, didn’t you learn from watching us that power corrupts? You chose that path. Chose it. You chose to hurt Sam when you knew that was the one thing I couldn’t forgive and then you chose not to fix him after promising you would. You lied to me. You went back on a promise. You….” He leaned his head back. “I’m sorry, Castiel. I can’t forgive you. I hate the power hungry dick you became, but…. I guess they’re right. For awhile you were an ally and a friend. I guess…. I can drink to that after all.” He raised the shot and tossed it back before heading upstairs to join Jo.

~~~~~~~~~~

Jo woke late to find Dean still in bed with her. He was on his back, looking at his phone and she rolled over, laying her head on his chest. “Morning.”

“It is a good one.” He waved the phone and set it aside. “His visitation. All over the news. Still hasn’t resurrected.”

It was going on three days now and Dean sounded better than he had the day before. There was the start of a twinkle in his eyes even, something Jo hadn’t seen in a very long time.

A slow grin stretched his lips. “We should take it easy today.”

“Stay in bed all day?”

“A chunk of it anyway. Don’t get to do that often.” The arm that had been under his head went around her. “I don’t think you can know just how much weight this takes off me, Jo. I mean, if he’s really gone. It wasn’t us did it so his church won’t come after us. We can forget about him. It’s like we can start fresh. The slate is clean.”

She ran her hand across his bare chest and smiled. She could only imagine how Dean and Sam felt, especially Sam. His tormentor was gone. Castiel wouldn’t set his recovery back anymore.

“We can concentrate on getting Sam help without Cas making things worse. We can track Meg, wherever the hell she is, and kill her. You and Ellen can go back out together. I know you’re probably excited for that. We can….” He swallowed so hard she heard it. “We can even try to make this work. You and me. If you want to.”

Jo raised up on her elbow, touched his face, and nodded. “I do. I’d like that.” She’d grown very attached to Dean Winchester over the past few months and wanted to keep him in her life. “And I’m definitely excited to go back out. We have a few plans to make first, but I’m ready.”

“He did do a good thing in bringing you and Ellen back. I will say that. He did a very good thing.” His hand slid over her back, fingers slipping beneath her pajama top.

“He’s done other good things, Dean.”

“Name them.”

She sat up, thinking about what she’d seen and heard since returning. “Look at all the sick he’s healed. As much as I dislike Constance Turco, she was dying and he healed her from that. He gave her more time on earth. He’s given a lot of people time they didn’t have, not just me and mom. He’s given orphans to families who desperately wanted children, found people willing to care for the elderly who didn’t have caretakers.”

“Mmm. Am I starting to hear a little ‘no speaking ill of the dead’ here?”

“No, I just think we’ve been so focused on how he’s affected us personally, that we forget there’s more than us out there. His methods were sometimes off, but he did a lot of good for people.”

“And he did a lot of bad.”

“Not disputing that.”

He sighed and sat up. One knee raised, arm resting on it. “I drank that shot last night before coming up here, but I won’t praise anything he did after he hurt Sam. He’s dead, Jo, and I’m done with him.”

She touched his face, rubbed her fingers across his jaw. “So today is a brand new day?” She slid her thumb along his lower lip.

“I’m declaring it one.”

“Then let’s start over. No orders from him, just you and me deciding what we want together. After all, we’re consenting adults.” She let her hand lower, trailing it down his chest. “Very consenting adults.”

His free hand slid through her hair. “Right now?” Dean leaned forward. “I want you.”

Jo went willingly into his embrace.

They went downstairs later rather than sooner.

~~~~~~~~~~

It was a brand new day.

Dean really felt that way, getting out of bed the third day with a lightness inside him that he hadn’t felt in years. His spirits were high and even the threat of those purgatory demons didn’t bother him like they had. This was a day for rejoicing. He’d decided that sometimes in the night, though his gut still clenched with the wrongness of Castiel in that glass case.

He found he had a ton of plans he wanted to make, for himself and Sam, for himself and Jo, and for all of them really. It was time to seize the day. With Castiel gone and no longer the big threat over their heads, he thought he could try to be the man he’d once been, the one who’d enjoyed both his work and saving lives. He’d let Jo’s love of it buoy him up into that state once more.

What was there to accomplish?

Hunting down Meg. He’d do that for Jo. He planned to kill the bitch and get rid of her for good. She was like a cockroach that never seemed to die. Where had she gone?

Killing Crowley. Always a good goal. Crowley had been a pain in the ass far too long as well.

Figure out how to get Sam well again. They were working through that already and it’d take time.

Go after the purgatory demons. A little trickier as a goal, but he thought it was doable. Jo’s idea of colloidal silver was a good starting point.

And then? Then there was the world in front of them. He’d accepted Jo as a part of his life and while it hadn’t worked with Lisa, he wondered if perhaps there wasn’t some way to make it work with Jo. It had been working the past few weeks, since they’d gotten personal in a very delightful way.

The atmosphere all day and into the night was pure giddiness, as festive as a New Year celebration despite the televised visitation for Castiel on low. Jo was dancing to the music playing softly in the kitchen while she heated up pizza and got out plates, her hips swaying. Ellen was making a pitcher of margaritas to replace the pitcher she’d already gone through and Bobby was sprawled in his chair, happier than Dean had seen him in a long time. The only one of them not currently in party mode was Sam and Dean moved towards him. If Dean could finally relax and celebrate, then Sam could.

“Come on, Sam. Relax. Celebrate.” Dean set a beer beside Sam and clapped a hand to his shoulder. “Join the party.”

“In a minute. I want to finish this.” He gestured at the computer.

Since Castiel’s death had been confirmed, Sam had been hunting down videos of the assassination from every angle. He was studying it, trying to figure out if the assassins were human or not. Since they’d disappeared from lockup, it was a good bet they weren’t human. He’d explained the project briefly earlier.

“You can work on it tomorrow.”

“No, I’ve almost got it. I think I know what happened.” He brought up two screens side by side. “Watch.” He clicked play on the first and when it had finished, he played the second one.

“What am I looking at, Sam?” It was video of the shooting, the first half anyway.

“The first guy. He comes forward, waits until he’s close, then pulls the gun and fires.”

“Yeah?” They’d all seen it.

“What did Cas do? He reached out his hand and gray stuff comes out of his mouth, right?”

“You really need to come have some pizza and party. I think Jo’s got the pizza about ready.”

“I will. Just look, okay? Right when he would have touched the guy’s forehead,” he pointed at the screen, “the guy tips his head back and from the right angle, you can see a demon fleeing from him. Here, watch again. Look at the top left of the screen. It’s a tiny sliver, but it’s there.”

When the videos replayed, Dean noticed it only because Sam had told him about it. The evidence of the demon was nearly obscured by the gray cloud. “So a demon was involved. All that means is they’re not too thrilled with him either.”

“Now look at the guy behind him.” He pulled up another video. “His eyes go black for a second right before he shoots. Don’t blink or you’ll miss it. It was a demon and look.” He tapped the screen with one finger. “He had the Colt.”

From the close-up, it looked possible. It could be the Colt and Dean made a mental note to have Bobby call the Sheriff and ask about the guns in more detail. He should have suggested that before, but he’d been a little distracted with his own thoughts for three days. “Good work. That’s awesome work, Sam. Not sure why you’re so driven about this, but you figured it out.” He glanced at his watch. “Now, it’s almost ten. Come and relax already.”

“Wait. Something else.”

“Oh, geez, Sam.”

“This is important, too. You need to see this.” He pulled up a last video, another one from the baptismal ceremony, let it play a few seconds, and paused it on one image.

Dean sucked in a breath. “Meg.” So, she had stayed close. Actually, he wasn’t surprised to see her there. Not after the way he’d seen her looking at Castiel in the past.

“You don’t sound surprised.”

“I’m not,” he admitted. “Jo ran into her awhile back, but then Meg seemed to disappear again.”

“Jo ran into her,” Sam repeated.

“At the pharmacy. She was with that Turco nut. Meg promised she’d be seeing Jo again soon and never followed up on that little threat.”

Sam sat back in his chair. “Neither of you thought to tell us? We could have been looking out for more signs of her. We could have been hunting her. Dean, we had a lead on Meg and you two let it go? You know how bad Meg is. Constance was a lead. She might have told us right where Meg was.”

Maybe it had been a bad judgment call, though he doubted that Constance would have told them anything. “We know she’s still here now and she never followed up.”

“It’s comforting that she’s still here and never followed up. Really, it is, because who knows what she’s been up to since Jo saw her, told you, and you didn’t tell any of us. Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Are you going to be pissy about this?”

“Yes, I’m going to be pissy.”

“Can you come and celebrate and be pissy when we’re done? It’ll take like an hour and then we can sit and chat about how I dropped the ball on this.”

“Did you ever.”

“Sam.”

Sam reached for the beer, though Dean knew he wouldn’t drink more than a couple swallows because of his pills. “Fine.” He closed the laptop and stood. “But we’re totally discussing this in an hour.”

From the TV came the sound of glass breaking, even exploding, and screams followed by a loud chorus of ‘Praise be to Castiel’.

Dean turned. All the blood seemed to be draining from his body, leaving him cold and a little lightheaded.

Jo dropped the pizza she was carefully carrying into the room. Cheese, toppings, and sauce slid all across the carpet with a splat.

Ellen knocked over the pitcher she’d just set down, alcohol spilling across the table and onto the carpet as well.

Bobby stopped talking in mid-sentence, his mouth opening.

Sam sat back into the chair.

“No. No! Damn it! No!” Dean stared at the screen.

His gut had been horribly right all along.

After three days, Castiel had risen from the dead.