Zachariah marched down the Heavenly hallways of Divine Management, bound for the Corner Office. Something was going on and he was not liking it.

At all.

First, there were the Winchesters. Zachariah had intended to spirit them away from the collapsing convent at the very last moment for a little heart to heart on gratitude and service, but they had been plucked from the devastation and deposited safely out of harm's way.

Out of Zachariah's way.

Then Castiel, that pearly thorn in Heaven's backside, had reappeared, whole, sound, and divinely pissed.

At Zachariah.

The Horseman War had been unleashed on earth but at best he'd only been in blood up to his knuckles, not his shoulders like was supposed to be, and the Winchesters had easily targeted, trapped, and tamed him.

This was so not how Zachariah had planned things.

Lucifer was free, points for Zachariah, but Dean was supposed to capitulate to Zachariah's edicts and be a good little soldier and vessel and let himself be used to kill Lucifer once and for all. Sam's blood dependence was supposed to be wringing him through another round of misery and withdrawal, making him a liability to Dean.

Instead, Dean was hell-bent (and Zachariah laughed to himself at the pun) on taking care of Lucifer his own way, their way, the Winchester way, and Sam had proved to be a liability to Heaven when War couldn't keep a secret and spilled his guts to the kid. Now Sam had taken himself out of the hunt to protect Dean, and Dean was redoubled in his goal to ice Lucifer to have Sam back with him.

This was so not Zachariah's day.

The lowly clerks and lowly secretaries plugged away at their lowly duties as Zachariah stormed passed them, keeping their eyes down and their thoughts to themselves. He barely noticed them anyway; something was afoot in the Corner Office, someone was intervening in his plans and it was going to stop.

Now.

The closer he got to the Office though, the more he noticed the clerks and secretaries shooting him looks, some of chagrin, some of amusement, a few were disconcertingly knowing. Surely, when Castiel had intimated that - that - God was back in the building, surely that had been a feint, a bluff, a hope.

Surely-

Zachariah burst into the Corner Office, with the floor to ceiling windows that looked out onto all creation, the massive desk made from the Cedars of Lebanon, the cushy cushy desk chair that Zachariah had been aching to set himself down in -

- and his longtime adversary, already in that chair, with his boots up on the desk, and a pen and Dayplanner in his hand.

"Z." He greeted Zachariah, with a voice as full of gravel as the road of faith. "Took you awhile." He stood and set the Dayplanner on the desk and Zachariah got a brief glimpse of the notations:

Save the boys.

Restore Castiel

Save the boys.

Stymie Zachariah.

Save the boys.

Hobble War.

Save the boys.

There was more, lots more, but Zachariah couldn't bear to look.

"What in God's name -?" he demanded.

"God is busy." John Winchester informed him. "So he sent me…"

The End