Cowboys and Archangels, Part One
Gabriel is in the middle of a trick when Lucifer finds him.
It's a good one, too. A great one. One for the ages. Coyote wishes he came up with tricks like this. And no, he's not overcompensating after being outed as an angel by those Winchester douchebags. He's just been feeling particularly pagan lately, that's all.
Dean would love this one though. Classic.
He's sitting at the back of a bus, wearing the face, body and shoes of a very expensive call girl, just waiting for his mark to get on at the next stop, when suddenly the seat next to him isn't invitingly empty anymore. Instead, there's a scruffy blue-collar guy in jeans and a work shirt who has power boiling out of his skin, and Gabriel is so surprised he poofs back into his regular shape.
The old lady sitting across the aisle turns in surprise, then freezes in place, as do all the other occupants on the now-stationary bus.
"Hi, little brother," Lucifer drawls. "Good to see you again."
"Lucifer," Gabriel says, fumbling for his cool. "You're looking...flaky."
Lucifer raises a hand to the decaying skin of his borrowed face. A long piece comes away in his fingers and he tosses it to the floor, uncaring. "I know. It's these disgusting human bodies. I hope my true vessel won't be this...leaky."
"Right. Sam Winchester. How's that working out for you?"
"All in good time. I have other things on my mind right now."
Gabriel snorts. "Like picking up your temper tantrum right where you left off."
No part of Lucifer's body moves, but Gabriel still feels like he's been slammed against a wall. "Watch what you say to me."
"Or what? You'll put me right after Michael on your shit list? Kill me right after you kill him?"
Lucifer's mental hold on him relaxes. "I don't want to fight you, Gabriel."
"I don't want you to fight me either." Gabriel shifts in his seat, turning to get a good look at his brother for the first time in thousands of years. "It's good to see you, Lucifer."
Lucifer smiles at him, and for one short moment it feels like the old days, before their Father made humans and screwed everything up.
"It can be like that again."
It almost sounds as if it's his own thought, until he remembers who he's sitting next to.
"There's no reason we can't be a family again. We can wipe it all clean and start again."
"And by 'it' you mean the Earth," Gabriel says wearily. "Humans."
"Don't pretend you care about these insects. I know what you were planning before I arrived."
"Yeah, and if you had your way, who would I have to play tricks on? I remember Heaven. It was boring."
Lucifer smiles. "I don't want Heaven."
"No, that's Michael's little mission statement. No, you want what? Hell? A new Earth? Do you even know? Or do you just want to stomp all over the world like Godzilla and who cares what happens after?"
"And you, brother? What do you want?"
"I want it to be over!" Gabriel yells.
Lucifer leans in. "And it will be. Very soon. The question is, will you be around to see it happen?"
He puts a hand on Gabriel's shoulder, pulling him forward into embrace and putting his mouth against Gabriel's ear. It's the most threatening hug he's had since his last liaison with Kali, and it makes his skin crawl.
"It's time to pick a side, brother."
Gabriel closes his eyes. When he opens them, Lucifer is gone and the bus is moving again. He whisks himself away before the next stop -- he's lost his taste for tricks.
~~~~
Harvey runs to greet him the minute he reappears in his own apartment. Gabriel picks up the excited little dog and holds him for a second. He'd worked hard on Harvey; he was almost like a real dog. He'd almost forgotten that Harvey isn't real.
But he isn't. No matter who wins the archangel pissing contest, nothing will happen to Gabriel's home. It's just the rest of the world getting fried.
Dammit. This is why he'd built this hideaway in the first place -- to avoid thinking about the rest of the world.
Time to pick a side. Lucifer didn't give him a deadline, but Gabriel's not stupid. Lucifer's ready to move on to Phase II and he's not going to wait forever for Gabriel to make a choice.
But Gabriel hasn't been a Trickster for a thousand years for nothing. He doesn't make choices on impulse. Well, he does, all the time, that's kind of his thing, but not big ones. For big stuff...he cheats.
He hasn't used this particular ability in a while, but hey. He's an archangel. You don't forget how to be an archangel.
Time travel's just like riding a bike, right?
~~~~
Looking into the future is tricky. It's kind of like getting reception on an old television. You wiggle the rabbit ears, skip past some fuzzy channels, try to zero in and make one clearer. You may get prime time or you may get the fishing channel. Chances of getting unscrambled porn are slim, but you try anyway.
Gabriel starts looking.
Future A: sign on with Lucifer. The Earth in flames, a fucking zombie apocalypse. Lucifer in a terrible white suit. Gabriel withdrawn into his little fake apartment with his fake dog and his fake life, pretending for as long as he can.
Ugh. Try again. Gabriel as twisted as Lucifer is, laughing at the Croatoans over a glass of champagne. Try again. Michael wins. Gabriel spends the next eternity in Heaven's prison, whose only difference from Hell is the decor. Try again. Gabriel tries to stand up to Lucifer, play the peacemaker like he always used to do. That one ends with him dead. Again and again, just as bad.
Future B: sign on with Michael. Earth in flames again, as armies of angels and demons face off all over the globe. Gabriel leading an army, just as if he'd never left home at all. Try again. Michael kills Lucifer, brings about Paradise. Gabriel's back in his fake apartment, escaping the endless Hallelujahs and absolute crushing boredom. Until he rebels himself and becomes a new Lucifer. Try again! Lucifer kills Michael. Gabriel doesn't outlive him by much. Again and again, nothing but endless misery if they lose and endless boredom if they win.
Damn. Try something new, anything. Future C: he tells them both to go fuck themselves. He tells Lucifer first. Dies. He tells Michael first, gets a disappointed look, then dies. He runs and hides again. They find him, in every possible hiding place. Dead. He fights back. Dead. Dead.
Fuck it. Gabriel ran away because he didn't want to hurt his brothers, but they don't seem to share his reservations. So you know what? Fine. He'll kill them first.
Future D: No more Mr. Nice Angel. The sword comes out of storage and the Trickster mask goes on. It's kill or be killed, and Gabriel's had a lot of practice at killing.
Lucifer's had more. No matter what Gabriel does, Lucifer sees him coming. The number of times Gabriel eats his own sword is just embarrassing. Michael's not much better. He falls for every single one of the tricks, but somehow still manages not to be wherever Gabriel's sword is. Dead, dead, dead.
It's a little humiliating. He may be the younger brother, and yeah his angel kung-fu has gotten rusty, but come on, there has to be at least one future where he doesn't get his ass kicked.
Yeah, one. With the fucking Winchesters, of all people. Sure it ends with everyone running away and then dying horribly shortly afterward, but the Colt almost keeps Lucifer down long enough for Gabriel to land the killing blow. That fucking Colt. Five things it can't kill and archangels have to be one of them.
He keeps looking, but it's hopeless. There's no future for him. This can't be what Lucifer was hoping for with his little ultimatum. Maybe he thinks Gabriel will choose the "become a psycho as well" route as the lesser of a million evils. But Gabriel won't. He may do horrible things to people on a regular basis, but at least he knows it's wrong. There's a moral victory in that, though he doubts anyone else would agree. He can't choose to lose that. But he can't choose any of the other futures either. He doesn't want to die.
All roads lead to the same destination. You can't change destiny. He's believed that himself, all his life, he played one of his longest tricks trying to drive it into Sam Winchester's Cro-Magnon skull, he yelled it at Sam and his idiot brother in an abandoned warehouse. And yeah, he still believes it. If you start at A, you'll end up at Z.
...unless you don't start at A. Change the starting conditions, change the parameters. Add a new variable into the mix.
If you can't go forward, go back.
"Harvey," Gabriel says, picking up the dog and dropping a big gooey kiss on its forehead. "Your dad's a genius. Pack your bags, we're going on a trip!"
With a snap of his fingers, they're gone.
~~~~
This is the strangest day of Sam's life. And Sam's had some strange days, even if he doesn't count that never-ending Tuesday or the time he got turned into a car.
Come to think of it, most of his strangest days have been directly related to a certain archangel who will remain nameless, which makes Sam instantly suspicious about the origins and the probably ridiculous purpose of today's insanity, though to be fair it had been pretty strange even before the obviously Trickster-related surrealism kicked in.
The changeover from ordinary weirdness to supernatural weirdness was pretty clear-cut. One minute he'd been standing in a Walmart in Kansas City, trying to convince a semi-fallen Castiel that yes, he needed new shoes and no, he couldn't have Crocs no matter how comfortable they were, while Dean laughed and encouraged Cas to try more and more outrageous colors because he's a terrible human being, and the next minute they're all outdoors in the middle of a dusty street that bears a startling and terrifying resemblance to Cold Oak, South Dakota, and he's wearing a hat.
The hat's the most disorienting part. Sam has the misfortune of knowing enough angels that being zapped without warning to a completely new location barely qualifies as a surprise anymore. But having his clothing changed without his participation or permission, that's creepy and kind of unsettling.
Castiel has it worse though. Sam's clothes haven't changed much, just the hat and a slightly different jacket and hey, new shoes, that's a weird feeling. Dean doesn't look like anything's changed at all except for a new hat of his own. But Cas, Cas is full-on Clint Eastwood. Broad-brimmed hat, rough tan pants, boots with spurs, a neckerchief and a poncho. He's still standing like he always does, hunched over with his hands dangling oddly by his sides, with that eyebrows-furrowed look he gets when the world fails to correspond to Heaven's Human Behavior 101 training course.
Sam can feel, without even looking, the extreme effort it is taking Dean not to burst into hysterical laughter.
"Sam," Castiel says, "I don't think we are in Kansas anymore."
That does it. Dean's bent over, hands on his knees, practically wheezing with laughter. He has to wipe tears from his eyes. Castiel pats his back like that's what his handbook said to do in this situation and it just makes Dean lose it all over again.
Sam purses his lips. "It's not that funny, Dean. This could be bad."
Dean waves a hand. "Yeah, yeah, I'm sure the carnival of horrors is going to start any minute, but the poncho--"
He dissolves into laughter again, only stopping when he catches sight of the change in his wardrobe. "Hey, cowboy boots! Like Dr. Sexy!"
"Or like cowboys, Dean," Sam sighs. "I think we've been dropped into Bonanza this time."
"What, you think we're back in TV Land?" Dean straightens up, wiping his eyes and getting out the last of his chuckles. "I don't know man, this looks pretty real."
Sam has to agree. TV Land had been candy-colored, bright and oversaturated. This is...dusty. The sun's so hot it's like a physical pressure and there's the distinct odor of horse manure in the air. And the people around aren't talking to him like they know him, or slapping him and calling him a coward. No, they're watching warily, whispering, ushering children away. Exactly as you might react to a trio of strangers -- two wearing gun belts, apparently -- suddenly appearing out of nowhere in the middle of the street in 19th-century American West.
"Still," Dean continues. "This does have the bacon-y stench of Gabriel all over it. Cas?"
Castiel is staring off into the distance, head cocked to the side in his usual part-bird, part-space-alien pose. "He's here."
"Great, where is he? I don't have time for this Westworld bullshit, there's an apocalypse on."
The head tilt gets a little more perplexed. "I don't know. His presence is clear but it's very dampened."
Sam's cocking his own head as well, but it's because he's trying to hear. "Would you guys shut up for a minute?"
There it is. "Hey, I think I found him."
"What? How?"
"Listen."
There are three saloons on this stretch of the main street, all of them pouring noise onto the boardwalks. Laughter, the rattle of glass and clanking out-of-tune piano music, just like you'd expect in any old Western TV show.
Except in most Westerns, there usually isn't a piano playing "Heat of the Moment" by Asia.
~~~~
Dean has to admit, it's fun pushing open those big swinging wooden doors. He's kind of envious of Cas's spurs for a moment; he could do that slow-motion clinking walk that always looks so frigging badass. But Cas is right behind him and he just manages to jingle like a middle-school girl with Christmas bell earrings. Someday Dean will teach him to be cool.
Gabriel would probably want to help. The Trickster isn't even trying to hide from them, sitting at the piano wearing a bowler hat, waistcoat, and a shirt with those armband sleeve-tie things you see bank clerks and bartenders wearing in these kinds of movies. The hat's tilted down over his eyes as he leans over the keys, having moved on from Asia to a truly horrific rendition of "Where Have All the Cowboys Gone."
That is, until he catches sight of them out of the corner of his eye and produces a crashing dissonant chord that lasts much longer than it would on any normal piano. Everyone in the saloon turns to look at the newcomers.
"Nice," Dean says, pulling up a chair next to the piano. "Very dramatic."
"You liked it? I've always wanted to do that." Gabriel grins. "Sit down, let me buy you a drink."
He drags a table over to the piano bench and corrals a couple more chairs, forcibly plops Castiel into a seat -- Castiel who is staring at him like Gabriel's got a map to finding God on the inside of his skull -- and goes to get drinks, coming back with a big mug of beer, two shot glasses and a bottle of whiskey, and a tall glass of milk he plunks in front of Cas with a grin.
Sam stares at his beer, obviously weirded out by the fact that not only did Gabriel buy them drinks, he actually paid for them. Dean's suspicious too, but hey, if Gabriel wanted him drugged and/or poisoned he wouldn't have to resort to making him drink it. He pours a shot and downs it. He manages to keep in the gasping cough but he has the feeling Gabriel heard it anyway.
"So!" Gabriel says, picking up his own shot glass. "How do you boys like Frontierland?"
"It needs a log flume," Dean drawls.
Gabriel grins. "I can put one in if you want."
"Please don't," Sam says, hand over his eyes. "Can't you just let us go?"
"The door's right over there, Sammy, you're free to walk out any time." Gabriel gestures with his shot glass.
"I mean back to reality."
"This is reality, cowboy."
"What my brother is trying to say," Castiel interjects, "is that this is not one of his constructed worlds. It isn't...TV Land."
"Bingo!" Gabriel waves a hand around the room. "This is a one hundred percent genuine, authentic, bona fide Wild West experience. Welcome to May 28th, 1836."
"You sent us back in time?" Sam's voice is doing that thing where it gets loud and high-pitched and it means he's about to throw an epic shit fit.
Dean's about to throw a shit fit of his own. "You sent us back in TIME?"
Gabriel holds up his hands. "Please, no applause."
"Send us back!"
"Back...to the ~future~?" Gabriel says dramatically. "Sorry, no."
"Gabriel." Castiel stands. With the hat and the Clint Eastwood clothes and the crazy-person stare, he actually looks kind of intimidating. You know, for a nerd angel in a poncho. "Send us back. Now."
"Or what? You'll take them back yourself? Please, you could barely make it to the 70s without exploding like a popcorn-eating pigeon; the nineteenth century may as well be on Mars. Or maybe you're going to make me send you all back myself. Think you can force me, little brother?" Gabriel stands as well, putting his hands on the table and leaning forward. He's gone harsh suddenly, threatening in a way that makes Dean push his chair back from the table.
Sam's pushed his chair back as well, and everyone else in the saloon has suddenly fallen silent. Dean has the brief ridiculous idea that Gabriel and Castiel are about to draw down on each other.
He's surprised when Gabriel's the one who backs down. It's like all the air suddenly rushes back into the room and Gabriel starts laughing. He turns and sits back down at the piano, trilling a piece of the theme song to "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly."
Cas stays standing, brow furrowed. "What does that mean?"
"It means siddown, Cas." Dean yanks on a corner of the poncho, bringing Cas back down into his seat. "No one's getting shot in a gunfight today."
"I don't have a gun."
Gabriel spins around on the piano bench. "That's because you'd shoot your eye out."
"Seriously, Gabriel, what do you want?" Sam blurts out. Poor kid's always anxious around the Trickster. Must have something to do with that whole Mystery Spot thing. "Why'd you zap us back here?"
"Is this another even more lame and convoluted attempt to get us to say yes to your douchebag brothers?" Dean is so sick of this shit. "Because the answer's still 'Go fuck yourself.'"
Gabriel's eyes slide away. Interesting. "No, it's not."
"Well, whatever it is, we ain't buying. Send us back, we don't have time for this."
"Hombre, you have nothing but time. One hundred and seventy-two years, 11 months, sixteen days, eight hours and forty-seven minutes, to be exact."
Sam frowns like he's working it out in his head. Dean hates mental math. "Until what?"
"Until Lucifer rises because you two kong-donkeys couldn't get your acts together. Oh, sorry Castiel. Three kong-donkeys."
"So what, you want to stop him getting out? Hate to break it to you, but I think you overshot a little."
Gabriel shakes his head. "Can't change the past. Paradoxes, destiny, blahbity-blah."
"Then what?" Sam asks, clearly getting frustrated.
Gabriel squirms. "You were right, okay?"
"Excuse me?" Dean says, hand to his ear. "What was that?"
"I said you were right. About me. I need to stand up to my family. Pick a side."
"Whose side have you chosen, Gabriel?" Castiel asks in that weird formal way of his.
Gabriel looks at him, like it's all Cas's fault and he doesn't know whether to thank him for it or curse him. "Yours. Humanity's. I'm sure it's all going to end in all of us dying pathetic, useless deaths, but you fuckers have convinced me that it's better than any of the alternatives. So I'm in, God help me."
"Sorry," breaks in Dean, "that's fantastic, really, but I still don't understand why that little epiphany required sending us all back to the pre-toilet-paper era?"
"Dean," Sam hisses at him, "don't discourage the very powerful potential ally."
"Nutcracker," Dean hisses back.
"This one's not a trick, boys. I needed to come back to 1836, and as much as it pains me to admit, I need your help."
"Why could you possibly need our help?" Sam wonders aloud.
Gabriel pours himself a very large shot of whiskey, then steals Dean's glass and pours another. "Because I can't kill my brothers."
He downs both the shots and closes his eyes. "So I'm going to help you do it instead."
Dean gapes at him. "You will?"
Gabriel cracks an eye open. "Don't make me say it twice."
"Wait, you're actually going to help us take out Lucifer?" Sam asks, incredulous.
"Or Michael. I'm not picky. Whatever stops the war and lets us all go back to shooting monsters or playing pranks on assholes or whatever it is you do, Castiel, do you even have any hobbies?"
Cas frowns. "I read the Books of the Prophets."
"Of course you do."
"And Dean has suggested I collect stamps."
"No, I said you seem like you already-- Never mind. How exactly are you going to help us ice your big brothers? We haven't had a lot of luck so far."
"Wait, 1836!" Sam exclaims. "The Colt!"
"Give the man a cigar! Or, well, a Colt."
Something wrenches in Dean's chest. "We already tried that one. It didn't work."
"Because it can't kill archangels. A design flaw caused by a sad lack of foresight." Gabriel raises his glass in a toast. "Which is why we're going to make ourselves a new one."
~~~~
Sam can't help the brief thrill of sheer nerdy excitement he gets from those words. A new Colt. And he gets to see it made.
Dean's less enthusiastic. "Fuck you. You couldn't think of this three months ago? We went after Lucifer with that thing. You couldn't send us a fucking text, 'Hey by the way it's not gonna do shit against the devil'?"
"I'm on your side now," Gabriel snaps. "Take it or leave it."
"Ellen and Jo---"
"Dean," Castiel says. Dean locks eyes with him, and Sam has to sit through another of their creepy silent communication moments. He's grateful for it at times like this when Dean isn't listening to words.
Dean eventually subsides, downing a shot of whiskey and slamming the glass on the table. "Fuck."
"I'll drink to that," Gabriel says, and does.
Sam eyes his untouched beer. Visions of bartenders spit-shining glasses dance in his head. Hygiene's going to be a problem here, he can tell already.
Castiel has decided his milk is acceptable and taken a drink. Sam really hopes Cas has learned about milk mustaches, because he doesn't think he can take much more before his mind snaps like a twig.
"So!" Sam says brightly, both to redirect the conversation and head off the drinking contest he can sense on the horizon. "How do we make a new Colt?"
"Same way the last one got made. We go talk to Samuel Colt."
"Samuel Colt? We get to meet the Samuel Colt?" Sam asks in an embarrassingly high-pitched voice.
"Perfect. I want to talk to that asshole as well. Who builds a gun that can kill anything but only makes 13 bullets? What the hell?" Dean grumbles.
"You have some serious Freudian issues with that gun, dontcha Dean?" Gabriel says wryly.
"If Samuel Colt will make this gun, why did you bring us here with you?" Castiel asks.
Good question. Sam's pretty sure the answer is at least 50% "because it would be funny" and 20% "because it would piss you off," but the other part of the reason could be interesting.
"If I'd popped up in 2010 saying 'Hey guys, I decided to join you, and by the way here's another identical yet completely different magic gun that can totally kill Lucifer, I promise', would you have believed me?"
Dean snorts. "We would have tested the thing on you first."
"And then you would have found out firsthand whether archangels can become vengeful spirits."
"So what, we're just witnesses?" Sam's dubious. Gabriel's always playing a double-game, and that's usually just a cover for another, sneakier game.
Gabriel's expression doesn't even flicker. "Yup."
"Fine, whatever," Dean says. "Let's just find this guy and get to work."
A wide, worrying grin appears on Gabriel's face. "Ah, there's a bit of a complication with that."
~~~~
The complication, to Dean's great annoyance, turns out to be that Samuel Colt is currently in Red Rock, New Mexico, while they are currently in Hot Springs. Gabriel apparently dropped them here because Red Rock is "a town full of hunters, every man woman and child. You think hunters like it when people from the future appear magically in the middle of their town? I mean, it doesn't matter to me but you two probably wouldn't enjoy getting shot. Or 1830s first aid." So here they are in Hot Springs, getting ready for a four-hour ride to Red Rock.
Ride. Ride, as in, horses. Plural. Four large, living, hay-eating, non-internal-combustion-driven horses.
"Hell no," Dean declares. He only comes up to the thing's shoulder. There is no way he is sitting on something that's taller than he is.
"Would you prefer a pony?" Gabriel asks, the mind-reading shithead.
"I'd prefer something that runs on gasoline."
Sam rolls his eyes. "You can't exactly wait here until they invent the car, Dean. Shut up and get on the horse."
Easy for Sam to say. He probably learned to ride horses in college, wearing a helmet and a stupid little green jacket and those pants with puffy thighs. It's possible that many of Dean's impressions of Stanford come from snobs-versus-slobs eighties comedies.
"I don't want them to invent the car, I just wish Gabriel brought along my car." A terrifying thought occurs. "Hey, you better send us back to the exact minute you grabbed us, Gabe. I don't want my baby sitting in a Walmart parking lot for a month."
"Funny you should say that, Dean! I actually have a surprise for you!" Gabriel grins from his perch on top of a stall door. Dean has a bad feeling about this. "I did bring your car, as a matter of fact."
Feeling getting worse. "Yeah, where is she?"
"Right here!" Gabriel reaches up and pats the neck of the tall black mare in the stall behind him. "I'd like you to meet Chevrolet. I call her Chevy for short."
What?
"What?" Dean says.
"Come on, don't you recognize her? She's had some bodywork done, I admit, but look into those eyes and tell me you don't see your baby."
Dean looks. All he can see is creepy horse pupils.
Except...there's something about the curves along the mare's powerful back, the almost chrome hooves, the deep rumbling snort she gives when she tosses her head. He holds up a hand and the horse lips at his fingers, her hot breath washing over his hand with the exact feel of his baby's exhaust.
"...Holy shit, you turned my car into a horse."
He can't even decide if he's pissed off. It's just too weird. "Jesus, Gabriel. Why do you always have to mess with my car?"
"What? Wouldn't you rather have a horse that already loves you?"
Dean eyes the mare. "What do you mean 'already loves me'?"
"Your car, it's fixated on you. It's kind of creepy."
"You are so full of shit. Cars don't have souls, they can't love their owners."
The mare huffs and tosses her head. Gabriel strokes her neck again. "Hush, baby. See, Dean, now you're just hurting her feelings."
"She doesn't have feelings!" Dean protests, but his heart's not quite in it. If you put a gun to his head he'd probably have to admit his car is one of his five favorite people.
And dammit, Gabriel's right. If anything was going to get him on a horse, if anything would make him feel safe riding on a giant unpredictable beast, it would be this. His car is home, even when she's a horse.
Sometimes he thinks there's something wrong with his head.
Gabriel hops down and opens the stall door with a flourish and the car/horse/car walks out. Dean manages to get a hand on the bridle, but then he's stuck. At least the saddle's on. But...
"Sam? How do I get on?"
Sam's already sitting on his horse, with his stupid cowboy boots in the stirrups and his stupid cowboy hat on his head, making him look annoyingly competent as well as disturbingly like Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain. Not that Dean saw that movie or anything.
"Put your foot in the stirrup and jump," Sam laughs at him.
Dean tries, but he's not exactly the most flexible guy in the world. It takes him two tries just to get his foot up. Getting into the saddle is not happening. Besides, he's having a hard time concentrating with Gabriel watching him -- he's pretty sure this is all going to end up on YouTube someday, it doesn't matter if he can't see any cameras.
He looks over at the only other person he can count on to be equally hopeless as he is.
Castiel is busy communing with his horse or something, with a hand on its forehead and a look of deep concentration. The horse seems equally into it.
"Hey, Horse Whisperer!" Dean calls. "A little help?"
Cas comes over and stands inside the "Dean's Personal Space Limit for Everyone Excluding Cas" Zone. Dean's not sure when Cas got his own zone, but it seemed easier than constantly stepping backwards.
Cas continues to stand there, clearly aware that Dean needs him for something but having absolutely no idea what.
Dean sighs. Sam's going to never let him forget this.
He somehow manages to convey the concept of a "boost" to Cas and after some very undignified gymnastics eventually ends up in the saddle. The very tall saddle that is located atop a huge animal a very long way off the ground. But damn, there's something about the leather saddle that feels just like the seats of the Impala, molded to fit the contours of his body after days and weeks on the road. The horse breathes and moves with a sound and rhythm that he would recognize in his sleep. Gabriel really did turn his car into a horse.
Fucker.
Cas has somehow gotten himself into the saddle of his own horse, which is a kind of buttery yellow color and seems completely besotted with him. Dean's suddenly dying to know if Cas has named it. Does he understand the concept of naming an animal? Of owning one? It's a very human thing, having a pet, being responsible for another living being. And do angels even think of animals as alive? He knows some of them barely think of humans that way. Maybe Cas just thinks a horse is like a slightly taller car.
It's also possible that Cas puts Dean and the horse in the same category of "lesser beings for whom I am responsible," and really Dean didn't need that thought today.
Gabriel's horse is short, almost a pony, white with brown patches and there's something very strange about it. It's a little too bouncy, too friendly, for a horse. Dean's about 90% sure that it's the result of another of Gabriel's little transforming tricks, but he has absolutely no desire to find out what it was before it was a horse.
Gabriel leaps into the saddle with literally supernatural grace. He doesn't even bother with the reins or pretending he's an ordinary person -- the horse seems to read his mind. Knowing Gabriel it probably can.
Dean clenches his hands on the reins and concentrates on the familiar feel of his beloved Impala. Horse. Whatever. He can do this.
"Heee-yaaah!" yells Gabriel, and they're off.
~~~~
Castiel is sometimes completely baffled by his brother.
This had been true even before Gabriel had left Heaven. Castiel had not spent much time with the archangels, but Gabriel had been the one most willing to speak to the lesser angels. Lucifer and Michael had been focused on their Father to the exclusion of all else, but Gabriel sometimes enjoyed talking to -- and playing jokes on -- his serious little brothers. Uriel had been a particularly favorite target. Castiel had often been a bystander and occasionally a prop.
Even in those days, Gabriel had been a mystery. Teasing and frustrating but unfailingly devoted to his family. And when Castiel saw him again, full of a harsh and violent humor, he had been confused and unsettled by the change.
So what Castiel feels now, sitting on a horse after his brother sent him almost two hundred years into the past, is familiar.
He isn't actually that bothered by the time displacement; angels are not locked to time the way humans are. Nor is he bothered by the changes to his vessel and its clothing, and a horse is not so different than a car to someone who can blink between continents.
His Grace has been dampened, and it is deeply uncomfortable.
He's been pressing against it, trying to touch what little of himself remains, but Gabriel is much stronger than he is and it's locked too tightly for him to break. He's effectively human, for as long as Gabriel chooses to keep him that way.
He should be worried, frightened, considering what happened to him the last time Gabriel took advantage of his superior strength. But he isn't, because Gabriel's Grace is also obscured, tamped down into an undetectable glimmer beneath the Trickster disguise, which itself is compressed almost to nothing. He's still more than human -- it's impossible to box up a star -- but he's less than an angel.
That's why he's baffled. Gabriel is hiding, and he has no idea why.
By the time the Winchesters demand a break -- Dean claims his backside is aching; Castiel believes he is lying to cover a need to urinate -- he has come to a conclusion.
"You're hiding from our brothers," he says.
Gabriel shoots him a sidelong look. "So are you."
Castiel had never expected to find anyone else as frustrating as the Winchesters. "Because you are hiding us both. Why?"
"Do you think our brothers are going to be thrilled to find out we're here? That we're trying to interfere with their precious apocalypse? They'll hunt us both down, then they'll hunt down the versions of us from this time period, and then probably all the other versions of us just for fun."
"You hid from them for centuries without abandoning your powers. You could simply keep pretending to be a Trickster. You're hiding from something else."
"You always were a smart one, Castiel," Gabriel sighs. "Okay, don't tell the moron twins about this because they'll freak, but I'm not really hiding us from Heaven. I'm hiding us from one very particular pissed-off older brother of mine who is probably going to be following us here any moment now."
"Lucifer."
"And he knows about my alter ego. Heaven may not notice a spare Trickster god running around, but you can bet Lucifer will."
"Won't he simply be able to follow us?"
Gabriel shakes his head. "Look back at the trail, bro."
Castiel does. He can see the marks on time where Gabriel plucked out the Winchesters and himself, he can see the tear leading to the early nineteenth century, but then everything smears out across time and space. He can't see their own arrival, not to within three decades or a continent. "What did you do?"
"I brought you here in pieces, that's what I did. Every atom took a different trip. I'm pretty sure I got them all back together but if you notice anything missing, let me know." Gabriel grins.
"He will still follow us. He'll keep trying until he finds you and Sam Winchester."
"Yeah, but he can't make too much noise or the boys upstairs will notice him, and I would absolutely love to see Michael and Raphael's reaction to Lucifer wandering around a hundred years ahead of schedule. All he can do is pop around until he catches a hint of us, which is why you and I are staying on the down low until we can finish the new Colt."
"And if he finds us first?" Castiel asked.
Gabriel looks serious again, dark and wild and nothing like Castiel's brother. "Leave him to me."
~~~~
Dean has never been so relieved in all his life as when Red Rock appears in the distance.
He has sores in strange places, he's nearly fallen off his horse a dozen times, and his new hat is rubbing a line on his forehead that he's pretty sure goes straight through to his skull. He's so tired that he doesn't even care about Gabriel's upcoming sudden but inevitable betrayal, or whatever the Trickster's real plans are, or how the hell they're going to get home if all this turns out to be an illusion and/or trap. The novelty of time travel wore off for him a while ago and now he's just tired.
So really, it's not even a surprise when they ride into town and are greeted with shotguns and flaming torches.
The town itself is like a fortress, as far as supernatural critters are concerned. The crossroads just outside of town has a giant Devil's Trap drawn dead center. As they ride in closer, Dean sees a flash under the hooves of their horses -- iron, thick like railraod tracks, buried just under the sand in a circle around the town. They pass a salt line as well, something the townsfolk must have to refresh constantly. Nothing is getting into this town without these people knowing.
And they definitely know when Dean arrives with two angels in tow. The four of them are riding straight out of the sunset, which lets them get almost thirty feet closer than they would have otherwise. As soon as they're visible, a welcoming committee comes out to greet them, if "welcoming" is the quaint old term for "suspicious and heavily-armed."
It's a mixed bag of characters who'd be rejected from a Peckinpah film for being too disreputable. Most of them look almost disturbingly like Dean's grandfather Samuel: unshaven, hard-eyed, and unwilling to buy whatever line of bullshit Dean or Gabriel may feel like selling. And Gabriel really wasn't kidding about it being the whole town that're hunters -- there are equally hard-eyed women with bonnets and shotguns, and at least one kid under the age of nine holding a bottle of what must be holy water like he's not afraid to use it.
At least the residents of Red Rock have the courtesy to drag the four of them into the town's one saloon before starting the interrogation.
It's a nice saloon, at least. Kind of like the Roadhouse, except with no jukebox and more mounted heads of dead animals (and other things). The wall of booze is the same though.
"Drink," says a grizzled old man, holding out a dirty glass of holy water. Dean drinks and hands it to Sam. He passes the holy water test, and silver, and a couple of others he hadn't even heard of. Life must be rough out here.
Eventually, the crowd seems to accept that they're not demons, shifters or werewolves and settles down a bit. Some of them wander over to the bar, but most remain in a loose huddle around Dean and his fellow time travelers. Dean notices that none of them move their hands too far from their guns.
"Who are you?" asks the old man. Now that Dean's looking closer, he can see the guy isn't actually that old -- probably Bobby's age, or younger. It's just a combination of dirt and a drastically lower life expectancy that's making him look like a crazy old prospector.
"I'm Dean Winchester, this is my brother Sam," is as far as Dean gets before he draws a blank. Explaining Cas and Gabriel is going to be interesting. "This is my friend Cas and his brother Gabe."
Gabriel makes a face at the nickname. He can blow Dean if he's not willing to help talk their way out of this.
"You don't seem too surprised by all this," the man observes. "You boys hunters?"
"Yes, sir," Sam says.
"What do you want?"
"Just passing through," Dean offers. "Any time you want to chime in here, Gabe," he adds out the side of his mouth.
"Do you have to nickname every angel you meet?" Gabriel replies in the same muttered undertone. To the hunter, he offers his most normal-looking, trust-me grin. "Is Samuel Colt in town? He's an old friend, I was hoping to say hi."
The hunter doesn't give anything away. "What do you want with Sam Colt?"
"Like I said--"
"Look!" cries one of the younger boys in the crowd. "Their hands!"
Dean looks down. To pass the shifter test, he had sliced his palm open with a silver knife. The blood is clotting by now, but it still runs down over the skin of his hand. Sam's hand shows the stain as well.
Cas and Gabriel's wounds have healed.
Suddenly there are guns in Dean's face again and his arms are being grabbed and forced behind him. Ungentle hands wrench his arm up and prod painfully at the wound in his palm. Cas and Gabriel are grabbed as well, their hands forced up and examined. For the moment they're allowing it, but Dean can see the effort it's taking Cas not to simply shrug them all off. Gabriel's just standing there like it doesn't bother him in the slightest.
"What are you?" growls the man.
"We're human!" Sam says urgently. "Completely human! Don't shoot us!"
"What about them?" the man gestures at the angels. "They're not human."
"No, they're not," comes a voice from the crowd, before Dean can come up with any suitable bullshit. "They're gods."
Dean and Sam look at each other. Sam shrugs. God is better than monster.
The crowd ripples and parts, allowing a young man to shove his way to the front. Almost a kid -- he looks barely over twenty, with his pants held up by suspenders, his sleeves rolled up and his hands in his pockets. But the kid's looking at Gabriel with the expression of annoyance and suspicion that means he's met him before.
"Hi, Loki."
Gabriel breaks into a grin. "Sammy!"
Dean gapes. There is no way. Just no way. He refuses to believe it. There is no way this gangly kid is Samuel Colt.
"What do you want this time?" the kid asks, almost wearily.
"Do I have to want something? Can't a guy stop by to visit an old friend and ally without being accused of ulterior motives?"
"A guy, yes. You, no." The kid turns to the leader of the crowd. "It's okay, Rodriguez. I know him."
Rodriguez frowns. "He's not dangerous?"
"Oh, he's incredibly dangerous. But there's nothing you could do to stop him anyway, so you may as well let him go."
That doesn't really seem to reassure the crowd. "You said he was a god."
"He is. But he's the capricious, ridiculous, prankster kind. He's not going to eat anyone."
Gabriel looks as if he'd like to object to that description. He's too far away for Dean to elbow so he concentrates on the thought "shut up" as hard as he can. From the glare Gabriel shoots him the message must have gotten through.
"What about the others?" Rodriguez persists. The kid shrugs, so the hunter focuses on Cas. "Are you a god?"
Cas looks hesitant. Dean has the worrying impression that Cas is going to choose this exact moment to believe Dean's bullshit pop culture-based advice and answer yes.
Gabriel spares them. "He's my brother; what he is isn't important. Those two jackasses are human."
"Hi," Dean says, managing a wave while still being held tightly in place.
Rodriguez gives him a long and searching look before doing the same to Sam. Dean can see Sam attempting his most harmless look, which has been getting a lot less convincing over the past few years. It seems to do the trick though, since Rodriguez nods to the hunters around them and the hands holding him relax and disappear.
Dean manages to get a look at who's been holding him. Two roughneck cowboy types and one beautiful dark-haired woman around his age. He winks at her. "Howdy."
She rolls her eyes and walks away. Good to know Dean can strike out in any century.
Gabriel and Cas have been released as well, but the crowd is less willing to stop pointing guns at them than at Sam and Dean. So there's an audience of armed hunters for Gabriel's touching reunion with Samuel Colt.
"You're a huge asshole, you know that, right?" Colt says irritably.
"Yep," Gabriel grins. "C'mere."
He grabs the kid and pulls him into a hug, which Colt bears for a fraction of a second before shoving him off.
"You don't remember what you did when you left?"
Gabriel looks shifty. "Refresh my memory."
"You may recall a particular gun. A gun that you insisted would be my ticket to fame and glory, a way to forge ties with an influential community of gun enthusiasts, a way to spread my new revolving chamber design. A gun that would help save the world. A gun that we spent weeks making. A gun that you then immediately stole and I never saw again."
"Oh, that gun."
"You helped make the Colt?" Sam asks in surprise.
"Of course I did, you think some random human could build a gun that can kill demons? Please." Gabriel buffs his fingernails on his waistcoat. "It takes a special touch."
Colt's glare fades a little. "You call it 'the Colt'?"
"Um, yeah." Sam is clearly embarrassed to be explaining this to the gun's creator. "All your guns are called Colts, but this one is 'the Colt'. It's, um, really famous. Everybody talks about the gun that can kill anything."
Colt sighs. "All the hunters in this territory certainly do. So they all want me to build them a new one, and fix their guns, and oh, do I know how to fix a crossbow? What about sharpening machetes? What about shoeing horses?"
He points a finger at Gabriel angrily. "You promised me fame and fortune; I'm more like the village blacksmith."
"The fame and fortune is still to come, my boy, I promise! Would I lie?"
"Like a dog," Colt says, but he's clearly resigned to his fate. "What do you want this time?"
Gabriel has the decency to look embarrassed. "I want you to build me a new one?"
From the look Colt gives him, Dean's pretty sure the best way to convince him to do it is to tell him the gun will be able to kill Gabriel.
"I need a drink," Colt grumbles, and stomps off.
Gabriel goes to follow, then turns and shoos Sam, Dean and Cas away. "A little privacy if you don't mind? I've got some explaining to do."
He darts through the crowd after Colt. "Hey, Sammy!"
Cas frowns after him. "Why is Samuel Colt the only one who gets an explanation?"
"Don't worry, Cas, I'm sure it'll be mostly lies," Dean says. "What I want to know is, why the hell is Samuel Colt a kid?"
"He designed the revolver before he was twenty, Dean," Sam says, pulling from his immense trove of useless knowledge. "He's brilliant. He was one of the founders of assembly line manufacturing as well, and he designed some of the first underwater mines, and he--"
"I get it, he's a nerd. Another nerdy kid named Sam, what are the odds?" Dean elbows Sam, grinning. "Which reminds me, we need to sort out names if we're gonna work with this guy. Two Sams will get confusing."
He catches sight of Colt and Gabriel through the crowd. Gabriel's apparently convinced Colt to at least listen, and he's making big expansive gestures as he tells the story of what looks like either Lucifer's Fall or Star Wars.
A heavy hand lands on Dean's shoulder.
"Boys," Rodriguez says, his tight grip ensuring that neither Dean nor Sam will be escaping, "come have a drink."
It is clear that this is not an invitation.
~~~~
As inquisitions go, it isn't bad, Sam thinks. Rodriguez warms up to them pretty fast once Dean starts telling hunting stories. It's clear that they aren't lying about hunting, and if Dean has to fudge some details, well, most hunters aren't exactly open books.
Rodriguez is telling a story now, something about a werewolf and a brothel, and Dean is laughing and saying, "Wait, I can top that! There was this time --"
Sam just feels uncomfortable. His cowboy boots pinch in weird places and he can't think of a single thing to say. What can he talk about? His time at Stanford (which doesn't exist yet)? Azazel and making deals with demons (the Devil's Gate isn't even open yet, demons are still rarer than unicorns at this point)? Jess, his mom and the family curse (because that's a real ice-breaker)? Demon blood, Lucifer, vessels, seals, the goddamn apocalypse? Sam's life has been too screwed up for far too long for him to be able to talk about it with strangers, and everything mundane in his life is now off-limits due to being from a hundred and fifty years in the future.
Sam's usually good at small talk. He used to think he was better at it than Dean, since he spent four years out in the "real world" while Dean just hunted with their dad and talked to no one but other hunters, victims, and monsters. But that's all just superficial. Sam can talk about American Idol and LSATs, but Dean can sit down and make friends. Dean fits in anywhere -- in a prison, on a movie set, in a high school, in 1973 and apparently in 1836 as well. Sam's almost envious, especially because he's pretty sure he's too self-conscious to ever be that way himself.
Like right now. Dean's busy making friends with the local hunters of Red Rock, while Sam stares at people's clothes and generally acts like a freak.
At least Cas is here. If Sam can count on anyone to be even more awkward than he is, it's Castiel.
And Cas is living up to every expectation. He's still holding himself in a way that only looked mildly strange in the trenchcoat and suit but looks completely bizarre in a serape and spurs. Plus the fact that everyone in the room thinks he's a god, so they keep shooting Cas surreptitious stares that he returns openly and creepily.
Rodriguez seems to remember that fact at about the same moment. "Hey, how did you end up running around with a couple of gods, anyway?"
Cas opens his mouth but Sam catches his attention and shakes his head. The existence of angels is one secret they definitely need to keep.
Sam's really curious what Dean is going to say. "So I was in Hell" is a mood killer if Sam ever heard one, but Cas cannot be counted on to play along with any outright fabrications.
"Now that is a great story," Dean says, to Sam's surprise, and he launches into heavily-edited version of how they met Gabriel for the first time, back when he was still pretending to be a Trickster. Sam had almost forgotten about that. Even he has to admit it had been pretty funny, though he'd never admit it to Dean. Or to Gabriel.
And Dean tells the story so perfectly, Sam can't help laughing. Castiel is also fascinated, having clearly never heard firsthand about any of Gabriel's pagan exploits.
Just as Dean's being tossed through the air by scantily-clad cancan dancers while Sam confronts a mad lumberjack and his saw, Gabriel reappears with Samuel Colt in tow. "And then I won by being completely and utterly awesome."
"You did not. I put a stake through you!" Dean protests.
"Ah, you put a stake through something you thought was me. It was...wait for it...a trick. Face it, you've staked me three times and I'm still here. I am officially three times as awesome as you."
"A stake, you say?" Samuel Colt says from behind Gabriel. "I'll bear that in mind."
"Don't bother," Sam says wryly. "Wherever the stake is, he isn't. It's like shooting at the rain."
"Aw, Sammy, what a sweet thing to say!" Gabriel pats him on the shoulder.
"Can I put in a claim now to be 'Sam'? I don't want to be 'Sammy' for the next month," Sam says.
"Too late, Sammy," grins Dean.
"I don't want to be Sammy either!" Samuel Colt protests.
"I'm just going to call you both 'kid'," says Gabriel. "Come on, kids, we've got work to do."
He kicks the leg of Dean's chair and pokes Cas's shoulder. "Let's go!"
Gabriel slides away through the crowd, but Samuel Colt stays standing by their table. He suddenly looks shy, and Sam revises his age estimate down a couple of years. "I don't actually think we've been introduced. Samuel Colt."
Sam stands up and holds out a hand to shake. "Sam Winchester. Pleased to meet you."
Colt gives him an awkward smile and shakes his hand. "I think we can get by with two Sams, don't you?"
Maybe this isn't going to be a total disaster after all.
~~~~
This is going to be a total disaster.
What was he thinking? Sure, it had seemed easy when Gabriel thought of it -- find Sam Colt, make a new magic gun, go back to the future, get the Winchesters to shoot one of his asshole brothers, and bam! Apocalypse averted, everyone wins and goes home and gets medals from Carrie Fisher (except Chewbacca, what the hell was up with that?)
But he'd overlooked a few key points -- like how much of a giant pain the ass it was to make the first gun. It was a dirty, difficult, boring job that took weeks of his life that he could have been spending having drinking contests with Raven or dropping too-greedy prospectors down bottomless mine shafts.
He'd also forgotten what a raging asshole Sam Colt could be.
Maybe the most irritating thing about him is how unimpressed he is by Gabriel. Over the years Gabriel's been worshipped, loved, hated, feared. Even the Winchesters, who know more about him than any humans since Enoch, alternate between trying to kill him and begging for his help. Sam Colt just rolls his eyes. It's so annoying.
Like when Gabriel sat him down and gave him the Paradise Lost Cliff's Notes. "I'm not really Loki," he'd said, with suitable gravitas. "I'm the archangel Gabriel." And Sam Colt had laughed and said that explained so many things about the Bible. He'd been so freaking blasé, it made Gabriel want to start shattering glass and rattling the building just to get a reaction.
And okay, to be fair, the last time they'd worked together Gabriel had fed him a never-ending line of bullshit. And he may have, occasionally, played a trick or two on him. But come on, that's just how Gabriel shows he likes someone. Ask the Winchesters.
Anyway, as annoying as Sam Colt's insouciance may be, at least it means he takes the whole Apocalypse Soon storyline in stride, time travel included. Gabriel only gets stuck when it comes to Sam Colt's personal role in ending The End.
"I don't know. You did the same song and dance about saving the world last time, and it looks to me like what happened was you got a free gun and the world saved itself."
"It's coming, believe me," Gabriel says, mentally calculating that Sam Colt has about a year and a half before the Devil's Gate cracks open and spills demons out all over Wyoming. "That gun is going to save a lot of lives."
"And I'll be famous, I remember. And yet, I'm still earning my bread by making silver bullets. I don't trust you, Trickster."
Stubborn kid. Gabriel reaches for the one thing he knows Samuel can't resist, the golden apple, the dangling thread that unravels the whole pigheaded sweater. "No one else can do this but you."
And the kid just can't help himself. "Yeah?"
"You think just anyone can make a gun that can kill the devil? Why do you think I keep coming back to you? Because you're the only one. There isn't anyone else. You don't do this, we go back home and watch the Apocalypse." Gabriel almost has him, he can feel it. Just a little bit more. "And yeah, most of those schmucks out there will never know about it, now or in the future, but the hunters will know, and someday it's going to be written down in a book, a book like the Bible all about the end of the world, and at the end of that book it's going to say, "Sam Colt is the man who made the gun that killed the Devil."
Gabriel sits back and waits. One potato, two potato, three--
"Okay," Sam Colt says, "but you're not stealing the damn thing this time."
Masterpost | Part II