Disclaimer: I don't own Death (Wow, what a weird sentence) or any of the characters and places mentioned here, except for Haley.

A.N: This is a prequel to my 'SUPERWHOLOCK: Eye of the Storm' fic, but can be easily read on its own. It takes place before either shows start, but eventually leads into them towards the end.

Warnings: Narrated by Death so that may be a little confusing. Mentioned miscarriage in this chapter. Angst. Fluff. Reference to outside Doctor Who and Supernatural canon. (For example, proses, comics, audio-dramas etc...) Un-beta'd.

Prologue

Death Tells a Story

There are six planes of existence. Why? Well, I suppose six is a good number. There were meant to be eight, but as soon as God got to six, He decided to rest. Personally, I never understood why He did that – I told Him He could have gone further, but there was something about that sixth realm He liked, so He left it be. I couldn't fathom it out though, as I stood there now, on Earth. This place was nothing special. Nice to look at, maybe. But nothing special. But maybe that was because it was my regular stop, and I'd grown tired of it. The people here died so quickly and so regularly that I was always busy. I sometimes wondered why He hadn't made them live longer, like He had with the other species He'd created. I never wished for it, though. I only wondered. I never wished for anything.

My work that night took me to a small house in Kansas. The couple who lived there were newly weds and had just moved in five weeks before, barely settled. Around the house was nothing plain stringy grass, saturated with heavy rainfall from earlier that evening. In the distance, thunder rumbled quietly as another storm neared.

I could sense the flickering life within, crying out, scared and confused, as I drew closer to the house. It reeled me in like a hand on mine and my ring glowed, telling me that the time was approaching. I made my way, soundless, up onto the porch and paused at the door, listening. Silence. The humans within had gone to sleep early. The wife was tired, partly from unpacking, partly from the cramps that had started in her lower belly, and the husband soon joined her.

After I moment, I passed through the door and entered the house. There were unpacked boxes still stacked in the landing. A tiny path had been cleared through. At the end of the corridor, a book shelf had already been put up, with an old The Beatles album on the shelf, and to the right, through the doorway, I could see that the kitchen table was set up also, with some boxes of cereal stacked up clumsy on the table.

I slowly made my way up the stairs. On the wall, there were pictures hung up of the couple. They were doing typical human things: guilty snapshots of simple actions. The wife washing up, flicking soap at the camera; the husband fixing a car, his face covered in oil; the two of them sitting together, kissing. There were no parents - already collected them years ago - but as I rose higher and higher, passing more pictures, including one of the wife polishing a rifle and sticking her tongue out, I could see the slow progression of a swelling in the wife's lower belly.

Upstairs, I found the couple in the bedroom, curled round each other in their sleep, perfectly content. The father was snuggled in the mother's blond curls, his hand resting on her hip, his fingers just brushing the life sleeping within. Unfortunately, that was the life I was here to collect. Her name was to be Haley, if I recall correctly. I rested my hand on the belly of the mother. Twins. At least there were. Accidents happen.

I pulled the chosen soul from the stomach, an orb of blinding white light seeping through my fist, and the mother stirred uncomfortably in her sleep. I placed a hand on her forehead to soothe her. She had been through a lot of pain, and was to go through much more soon enough. But this was the Great Plan and I didn't like to alter it, so I took the soul away and left the house, entering the Veil.

As we left the plane of the living, the soul grew into a little girl of about five earth years. No doubt, this would be how she would have looked had she lived. She had golden-brown her that danced above her shoulders and her eyes were a greenish-brown. She looked dazed and confused, so I kept a firm grasp on her tiny ghostly hand as guided her away from the living. The good thing about collecting souls as young as this is that they didn't fight. They didn't beg for meaning, nor did they refuse the gift of peace. They just came along quietly. Sometimes, I wasn't sure if they could speak at all.

When we came to the Great Divide, the crack that separated each realm, I looked down at the soul. The younger ones usually found the climb difficult. As I looked down at her, and she looked up at me, I could tell this one was special. But given her heritage that was hardly surprising. She was the extra product of a successful experiment - one billions of years in the making. Although the experiment was intended, she was not. She needed to be got out of the way. Cruel? I suppose so.

Unaware of my thoughts, the soul smiled up at me and clasped my hand tightly, almost as if I was the one who needed the courage to make the jump. I didn't smile back because I felt that she hadn't earned a smile from the likes of me.

On my finger, my ring lit up for a moment, signalling that it was safe to cross the Divide. That caught the soul's attention. I had no trouble getting her to keep up from that moment on. She seemed to think of me as some wondrous being, which I was, but I hardly ever got such praise from humans.

I led her across the Divide, concentrating on the climb, not wanting to tumble into the Void. Many of my Reapers had done that; losing concentration for a minute and losing themselves forever. But they did their duty, and did their best to save the soul. When I passed through here, and found a lost soul wandering about the Veil, the most common reason is that the Reaper fell. Sometimes though, it was because the soul had chosen to stay behind, or that it was bound, unable to go to Heaven or Hell. The latter was probably the cruellest fate of all.

As we made the climb, the soul buzzed with excitement beside me. From her point of view, there could have been anything there. Usually it was something to make the journey easier: A golden staircase. A present. A friend. But I saw the truth. I always saw the truth. And I saw black. Just black. There was nothing for a little girl here. Nothing for no one. This was just the space between – the glue, if you like, that held the six planes of existence together. That was its only purpose. Beyond this place was the passage leading to Heaven or Hell. It was quite the journey.

A few minutes passed when a quiet voice beside me said, "I'm bored."

I glanced down at the soul. She was looking back at me as though I could grant wishes. "Nothing I can do, I'm afraid." I told her.

The soul just blinked. "What's your name?" she asked me.

"I have many names." I replied. It was the truth, after all. The Angel of Death, Thanatos, the Grim Reaper – I wasn't too fond of that one – Hel the Goddess of Death, and many more. And those were just the ones of Earth culture. I never told any soul my name. To them, I was a reaper, a guide, or whatever they needed me to be, and nothing more. I didn't separate myself from my fellow reapers nor did I wish to. Yet I also felt, with the younger souls, that if I told them my name I would have to explain myself to them.

After a while of silence, the soul asked, "Can I call you Dada?"

"...No."

"Momma?"

"No!"

The soul pouted. "You're mean. You were nicer before."

I looked at her, puzzled. "Before?"

"Before." She repeated, waving a hand to gesture to her surroundings. "You used to make me laugh. There was me, and there was you. The other one. You and me. Remember?"

Ah, of course! She was talking about her twin. It must have been confusing for her. There was just her and her twin in a dark, strange place, and now I was here and he wasn't, and I was taking her away. "I'm not your brother." I told her and, knowing I'd regret it later, I added, "My name is Death."

I hate breaking rules.

"My name is Haley." She said with a proud smile. Cheeky beggar. "Where is the other?"

"He stayed behind."

"Why?"

"Because he had to."

"Can we go back?"

There was a tug on my hand, but I kept my grip firm.

"No." I said, "We can't."

The soul didn't argue and I was grateful for it. We continued like that for a while. The silence fell like snow, carrying our footsteps and brushing against our shoulders, reminding me of the desolate place this truly was. I liked it. It was undeniably real and it shared the setting of my birth. I supposed it was home to me.

I heard an impatient huff from beside me, followed by; "Will you tell me a story?"

The soul – Haley, as it now seemed appropriate to address her by – looked up at me with pleading eyes. I blinked down at her. This one was certainly different. But, I reminded myself, I was what she needed, so long as that didn't cross the border into attachment. "What kind of story would you like? I only know sad ones."

She frowned pensively, "What's 'sad'?"

I complemented how I would go about describing sadness to a being who has not, and would not, experience such a thing without the use of synonyms causing increased bafflement. But I didn't have to face this challenge because, like the flight of a sparrow, her attention flew to something that ahead of us. We had passed the Void now, across the Divide.

Haley gasped loudly, her eyes wide, and she pointed with her tiny finger at the endless blackness before us. "Look!" she cried, jumping up and down, "Look!"

I did. I saw nothing. Whatever Haley was seeing was whatever her imagination had blinded her with. This was the place where the rogue souls resided - a place on the border of heaven. Some of heaven's power leaked through here, giving the souls the chance to dream up a home for themselves. But it was not heaven, not controlled; just a place where dreams and nightmares ran wild. I imagined it could be frightening for those trapped here, but luckily few were. They called it Limbo.

"Do you like it?" I asked Haley.

"It's…" her face screwed up tight as she tried to think of a word. Never before had I wondered how difficult it must have been to think of words you were never taught. "Pretty." She settled on at last.

"Pretty." I repeated, looking up again.

"It so pretty!" Haley stopped and looked at me eagerly, "Tell me about pretty places!" she declared.

I shrugged, "I suppose I know a story or two with pretty places in them. That doesn't mean they're mine to tell."

Haley whined and pouted and squeezed my hand in a way that couldn't decide between asking and pleading. It caught me off guard for a minute. It had been an awfully long time since a child – or anyone, in fact – had held my hand like that. The last time, I remembered suddenly, was on a secluded ripple of land that rose and dipped beneath two sizzling suns, like the Devil's snake. I remember thinking when I got there how I had heard many say that this place was stained with the blood of billions of galaxies, that it had seeped into the soil and turned the grass red, but at that point, when I stepped foot in that place, they were wrong. The only blood that was here was the blood of a single child – it may as well have been the whole universe. That same blood was being smeared onto my hand as a boy clung to me in the same pleading manner that Haley was doing now. Only Haley's request was innocent, unlike that of the boy.

I remembered his white hanging face, his large dark eyes, and his slurred words as he spoke at me. Behind him, two other boys lay in the grass. On the ground, not too far away, there was also a blade, silver and glinting against the red backdrop, and on its hilt there was a tiny engraving that read:

Castiel.

Memory is like carrying your belongings in a bag with holes. You'll drop many things on your way but one day you'll retrace your steps and retrieve something you didn't know you had. There was a story behind this memory in particular and now that I had found it, it suddenly shouted at me, reassuring me that it was a story that deserved to be told. Whether this was because Haley had asked for a story, or whether it was one of the very few lives I had influenced in more ways than just the taking of another life, I couldn't be sure but I had the sudden urge to tell it either way. I hoped that it would in some way serve useful to Haley. Maybe it would help create her heaven, by adding to those lack of memories - and whatever she was seeing right now - since she had no life of her own to "relive her greatest hits" as they say.

"Very well." I murmured quietly, more to the memory of the boy rather than to Haley, "I will tell you a story – but only for a little while, you understand? You should be in heaven soon."

I placed my cane down beside me and sat down. It was like sitting on a thin sheet of glass with the endless drop below you – but I had wings that stretched for miles, rivalling all my reapers. I motioned Haley to sit close beside me, so I could catch her in case the environment became unstable and we fell. Haley giggled with excitement and I rolled my eyes, telling her to be quiet so I could think. Haley clamped her mouth shut but couldn't stop the tiny squeak that escaped her.

"I can't you much about heaven – you'll find out what it's like soon enough." At this, Haley gave another quiet squeak, bobbing her head, and I briefly wondered why she had an inability to keep still. I plunged on, "Besides, it won't matter because this story is set in the time when heaven a was small and, quite frankly, uninteresting place."

"It is pretty?"

"Extremely." I replied, "Heaven holds all the beauty you allow it to have. Back then, it was ran by the Creator – or Allah, or Brahma, or whatever you wish to call Him – and His loyal followers. The Creator was a very…" frustrating, I almost said but didn't, "…eccentric fellow. Despite being larger than life, He is very good at hiding. There were few who knew what He looked like."

"Do you?" Haley said quietly, looking at me with unblinking eyes.

"Yes." I answered, "Anyway, the heaven He ruled over was a lot smaller back then. It only had a few billion souls, and none of those souls were human. Humans didn't exist back then. Neither did the Earth. You see, for a long time there was just Him and me – I'm not sure which of us came first; I don't remember it all too well – and after a while that got rather boring. So He, the appropriately named Creator, began to do just that. That's when He came up with the Great Plan. And…when He gets an idea in His head, He cannot be deterred from it."

As I spoke, I noticed the five-year-old girl was no longer five years old. She had aged a year, as though my words matured her. Her hair was slightly longer, reaching down to her collarbone, freckles had appeared on her nose, and her eyes were more set into her face. I also couldn't help but notice the tiny red stain on her white dress, to the right, just below her ribcage. Haley didn't seem to notice it.

"What was the plan?" she asked.

"I told you. I don't remember." I said, "I don't think He does either. But soon He was creating millions of creatures. You see His plan, whatever it was, involved creating the perfect race. But anyway, I digress. This story is about none of that."

"Oh?" Haley said, startled.

"No. This story is about one of God's host, a young and foolish angel, and his friendship with two Time Lords, who were equally as young and foolish. This angel was given the name Castiel."

A.N: Okay, the first chapter of the Eye of the Storm prequel. Like I said, you don't need to read that to read this and if you choose not to read one, you're not missing out on any major plot details. That being said, there are going to be some recurring characters, like my OC Haley.

References:

Thanatos – Hellenic (Ancient Greece)

Hel the Goddess of Death – Scandinavia (Norse mythology)

Brahma - The Creator. (Hindu)

"As old as God. Perhaps older. Neither of us can remember any more." Death to Dean (Supernatural season 5 Episode 21 'Two Minutes to Midnight')