Night 53: M-A Block Hallway
[From here.]
At one point Sora might have noted how the hall was particularly empty, but as things stood, he just made his way around the corner and toward the block's exit without really thinking about it. The fact of the matter was that he'd seen this hall in so many different states (empty, packed full of people, streaked with blood after a ( Read more... )
At one point Sora might have noted how the hall was particularly empty, but as things stood, he just made his way around the corner and toward the block's exit without really thinking about it. The fact of the matter was that he'd seen this hall in so many different states (empty, packed full of people, streaked with blood after a ( Read more... )
Having determined that it would be a pretty good idea tonight to take some time out alone and just work-research, stumble straight into the middle of a hunt (which was likely, given this place), whatever-fate would only just have it that as soon as Sam rounded the corner, his flashlight fell on...him.
Yeah, he recognized that figure anywhere. Especially after last night. He still hadn't had the chance to confront the Trickster over what all that had been about last night and while he seriously didn't feel like bringing on the headache that he knew would come with this task, he couldn't ignore it either.
For all he knew, the Trickster might've planted himself here deliberately. He'd latched onto Jo and Sam could hardly forget the when he'd latched onto him. The demigod had a tendency to be there when unwanted. Not that he was ever wanted in the first place.
Great. So much for obtaining some peace. Still, he had said he wanted information and...here was information. Maybe not about the institute, but nevertheless important. The longer he let this talk of angels stew, the sooner it would come to bite them all in the ass.
Sam swept his flashlight forward and he made no effort to keep it out of the Trickster's eyes. He lifted an eyebrow. "Lost?"
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Gabriel might have had the decency to not stab Sam (and totally not look surprised by a voice creeping out of the darkness followed by a frame that was equivalent to a moose on stilts), he wasn't equally as good at hiding his annoyance, closing his eyes with a frown. "Turn down the high beams before someone loses an eye."
He meant Sam in particular, by the way. Once Gabriel found a step ladder. It was nice that the joys of having your face on level with someone's elbow kept being brought up all the time.
Besides, if Sam was going to go out of his way to be a smarmy smartass, he could at least be polite. Gabriel was not supposed to be the victim of annoyance. Annoying was on his terms. "What's it to you, yeti? Gonna lead me by the hand and take me on an adventure?"
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Even if that meant a freaking demigod that had made his life hell on more than one occasion.
God, this place really was driving him crazy.
He ignored the rhetorical question. No way was he taking the bait. "So you wanna tell me what that was all about last night?"
Normally, he was more tactful than this and more willing to ease a conversation into the topic he wanted to discuss, but in this case, it felt like a waste of effort. It wasn't like the Trickster had been all that considerate in their interactions.
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"Uhhhh," let him think about it, "nope. I wasn't planning on ever mentioning it, in fact. And before you start with your wild and mildly flattering accusations, I didn't do it." Gabriel just thought it would be a good idea and go ahead and lay that down, considering the straight flush he'd had of people all blaming shit on him. It was flattering, sure, but he didn't like to steal credit from anyone else. He was an upstanding guy like that.
Also, he still insisted he was more imaginative than a haunted asylum.
"Besides, what's it to you, kid? According to your own figuratively little stalker, sounds like you're keeping secrets from your own brother." If only he had the ability to create the world's smallest violin again. "And that's terrible. Leeeeet me guess - something about demon blood? Just a wild guess."
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No, it shouldn't be a question. Their abductors apparently knew and he'd had at least one patient tell just by looking at him from across the room. In light of that, Sam realized he should probably only have been surprised if someone who could bend time and reality at the snap of a finger hadn't known.
He'd have been suspicious about the connection this might've presented, but for once, the Trickster's penchant for screwing around with people's lives played in his favor. Since the keyword was people and Yellow-Eyes had wanted to throw demons across the entire planet. He doubted the Trickster would've found demons as fun to mess with.
Then again.
"Yeah, well, Dean knows." Now, he didn't add. "Speaking of Dean, you know he was setting out to kill you last night, right? Before we were interrupted? Trust me, the shadow deal didn't help stop him from wanting to put a stake through you."
And him. Why wasn't he here to kill the Trickster? He had to admit, he should've felt a stronger instinct to. It was a threat, after all. But he was needed to know, too, what the hell was going on. This whole frigging business with angels and apparently Heaven and names like Lucifer and Gabriel being tossed around. Right now, the Trickster was his pretty much his only way of knowing. (Confirming? He didn't know if he was ready to go that far.)
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If it was a threat on Sam's part, it was too little, too late. Once the little time jump had been established, Gabriel had been prepared to be next on the monster menu. Jo had tried the same, and you know what? He was a little sick of all the disrespect and the condescension, even from his grunt baby brother.
"So what's it gonna be, Gigantor? Gonna sic your brother on me or do it yourself? I guess you could always resort to threats in the hope it'll make me throw some random tidbit of information you're looking for your way. I have to say though, probably not gonna work."
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Sam folded his arms across his chest and sighed. This was seriously gonna go against everything he stood for, but then these days, what did he stand for? Deals with demons, breaking promises to his brother left and right, and now...this. But screw it, this was big, bigger than even the Trickster or-uh, angels, apparently, according to Castiel. And the Trickster's shadow. Anyway, he could play it safe or gamble on this, and there were times when Sam wasn't the best at playing it safe.
"None of the above, actually. As much as I want to."
Unless he made the first move, hung unsaid in the air, but Sam had to admit that so far, the Trickster didn't appear to be as up to his old tricks as usual. Annoying and antagonistic, yeah, but nothing had happened. And he'd been pretty damn freaked by his shadow last night which said something about what this place could do even to a demigod. Not that the Trickster wasn't a good actor, but...
Besides, God, knowing this place and the way his life went in general, the Trickster would probably just pop back in the next couple of days, memory wiped, and then he'd be stuck with the same damn thing.
There was a beat before he continued. "Look, I don't know about you, but I'd rather we all get out of here instead of killing each other."
Well okay, so he didn't give a crap if the Trickster got out of here or not, but if it meant everyone got out, he figured the Trickster coming along-there were worse prices to pay, that was all.
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Maybe Jo Huntress had influenced them a little, if she was being honest. Maybe they'd all gang up on him at the wrong time and gank him in the heart. Wouldn't be the first betrayal, and it certainly would hurt as bad. Hey, maybe he was the favorite old kid and he'd just pop back to life again. That would be swell.
But seriously doubtful.
"A truce." He puffed out a short breath of air that sounded shockingly like "huh". "You're kidding."
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And Sam was pretty sure he could say that as little as he knew about the institute's array of paranormal freaks, he still knew more about how not to get devoured in two seconds flat than the Trickster did.
...Kind of pretty sure.
He didn't voice any of his thoughts yet and shrugged instead. "No, I'm not." He stood, waiting for the Trickster's response before he said anything else. He hadn't exactly set out tonight to make a deal with a pagan god.
Make a deal with a pagan god. It even sounded absurd in his head.
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"Ooookay," he started. It was a good start, considering how there wasn't much chance of this ever going good for him. "Hypothetically, I'm going to pretend to be totally okay with this. Hunter, pagan god. You have to admit, it's all very progressive of me to even consider." Sure, it'd happened in the future, but this... wasn't the future. Or maybe it was. His apocalypse alarm wasn't in working order any more, and considering the varying time lines that were crisscrossing all over the place, there wasn't much chance in pinpointing the time of his current location. So maybe it was still the past and he should, technically, still just be sneaking around and generally ruining lives. Gabriel. He was a life ruiner.
Either way, he knew the hunter had some kind of catch. Maybe Jo hadn't been looking to use him specifically, but damned if he didn't know the Winchesters weren't so beautifully naive. Resourceful of them, sure. He could respect that. But it was just a pride thing. "What are you planning on squeezing outta me?"
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Not that pagan god was a title he was sure applied wholeheartedly to the Trickster anymore, though he had to admit that it was only the shadow last night that was throwing a wrench in the works. Everything else about the god screamed Trickster. At this point, Sam could predict the guy's M.O. in his sleep.
One useful thing about the Trickster: it was easy to spot when he was the one behind it all. Of course, everything after that was a frigging headache to solve.
He took a few steps forward, one hand in his pocket and the other still holding the flashlight. And yes, he was considerate enough to keep it pointed down and out of the Trickster's face.
It occurred to him that they were still in front of the men's room. Negotiating the terms of not killing each other. Or he guessed in the Trickster's case, it was more like the terms of not screwing around with his brother to make Sam want to kill himself. Either way.... He glanced briefly at the door, then back again, and tried not to sigh out loud.
Right. The Trickster would want to know what Sam wanted from him.
"Whatever's got us stuck here, he has a thing for bending reality and alternate dimensions," he said. "Sound familiar?"
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Okay. Considering the big contenders in his family and their actions as of late, he was being very progressive. Like breaking the metaphorical progressive bar and then making it explode several times. (Except for Castiel, maybe, but "except" was kind of a big word there. Biiiig word. And also Gabriel did not really think of Castiel at all. Or really make note of him. Or think about not thinking about him. Chances are his brother wasn't about to pony up any huge, groundbreaking wells of information out of his ass and just squeezing the small bit he had out of him was about as difficult as pulling teeth with eyebrow tweezers. Also, he knew the whole thing about "angels" and "grudges". Terrible combination.)
It was good on him that he didn't raise the angel blade any higher with even the small approach Sam took towards him; in fact, he'd lowered it a little with the mere mention of "truce". He wasn't looking forward to trying to defend himself anyway. He also wasn't very trusting in general.
Gabriel resisted the urge to roll his eyes at Sam's train of thought. "Reminds me of a little something, yeah. I hope you're not believing this whole catastrophe's the work of another trickster, 'cause I can tell you it's definitely not." Sure, they could be pseudo-gods... but they weren't God-god. And pseudo-gods could not revive archangels or throw them in a lake against their will.
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More importantly, what the hell could be done about Dean? Not that Sam could bring that up without dropping too much information at once about the deal. About how certain he was that no matter what Ruby assured him, no matter what he tried to tell himself: Dean wasn't alive back in the real world, end of story. Nothing to be done. But he'd never been good at accepting-whatever that was, pessimism or realism or some combination.
It'd have been easier to believe something one way or the other. He was sick if inklings of hope that led nowhere. It summed up his life. It was his life.
Only no, damn it, he wasn't going to get stuck on that right now. If there was ever a bad time to do this, it was while grabbing information out of the Trickster. Information that might not even be useful and that he had no way of verifying, and that was coming from a demigod who had no reason to help anyone much less a hunter. But Sam had cracked cases using just Google, Wikipedia, and witnesses who might as well have been asleep during the incident. As far as resources went, this didn't rate that low on the unreliability scale.
Though it was getting there. Maybe in the 1.5-2.0 range.
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Then again, he was already dead, so there wouldn't really be any change at all. How convenient.
The point was this: Gabriel had already ruled just about... everything out. Tricksters couldn't do this to him. Hell, no kind of pagan could, minor gods or not. Certainly none of the little guys - vampires, ghouls, ghosts, whatever. Not cherubs, not the grunts. An archangel - well, sure. Lucifer definitely could, but he couldn't bring him back to life (probably). Which kind of left only Dad, which was both unrealistic and completely depressing.
"Yeah, some. We don't all operate the same, you know. You think I'd be stuck in the middle of this shit if I knew what was going on? There could be a ripple, for all I know. There could be a giant sinkhole in the flow of time. The universe could be imploding. We could be stuck in a dream. I think that's part of the problem with you, kid," he pointed the knife in Sam's direction, "you always want to know the hows and whys. After a while, you realize it doesn't matter that much, at least while it's happening."
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He huffed, stopping short of an exasperated snort. Why had he thought this was a good idea again? "I think you would have some idea of what was going on if you actually bothered with the hows and whys." He paused. There'd been something he'd wondered awhile ago, a question he'd pushed aside because there'd been no way of answering it. Until now.
"All right, fine, then answer me this," he said. "When you went and chucked me into the Wednesday, was it a pocket dimension? Or did you actually mess with time?"
A part of him had always thought the former was more plausible. Screwing with time, that was some serious crap right there. To do it that frivolously and for that long-six months-either that meant the Trickster possessed some major juice or this idea of toying with time was somehow less big a deal than it sounded. Which was just so counterintuitive, it was hard to believe without any solid proof.
But then, he hadn't carried back any of the scars he'd had over that period. Exact same way Dean here hadn't, either. That was always the one thing that tripped him up.
He regretted not asking Skuld what she knew about manipulating time when he'd had the chance. His experience with other pagan gods all pointed towards them being less gods than just self-entitled supernatural beings who liked worship and sacrifice. Hell, they'd taken out two in one night before.
The Trickster had always been different. But even now, he couldn't bring himself to outright ask-that. It was just. It was crazy. He felt crazy just thinking it. Of everything he'd read, there was no way...He was used to the things they dealt with sometimes breaking the rules, but this went way beyond that.
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"I don't torture and tell," he said, his tone making the words seem totally innocuous. He was good at that. "It doesn't matter either way. I can do both. Don't think it's just a pagan thing, though. I'm top of the line. Expert grade, even. I could say messing with time is tricky, but that kiiinda understates the difficulty." Damn, he wish he had some kind of convenient sheathe or some - right. Jacket now. He paused to rifle through his new (old?) clothes to safely tuck the archangel blade into an inner pocket. The weight was comfortable, but still cold.
"Whoever's in charge is doing things they shouldn't be able to. It makes them..." - an angel, a damn angel was the only thing that could mess with time outside of the big man himself - "a big problem, obviously. Even if we're in a pocket dimension, it's still a problem of time. Your brother should at least have some idea about what the hell's going on, and clearly he doesn't."
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