Author's Note: Lucky thirteen! As promised, the next installment focuses on Gabriel, Sam and Dean, Castiel, and Bobby. The title for this chapter comes from the lyrics to "Wheel in the Sky", by Journey.

Wheel in the Sky Keeps On Turnin'

For the first time in what seemed like forever, it was just Sam and Dean in the car.

Sam was sure that one angel or another was only a prayer away – they had them crawling out of the woodwork these days, it seemed – but for now it was just Sam, Dean, and Dean's questionable taste in music. If Sam tried hard enough, he could pretend that there wasn't an apocalypse pressing down over them, that there weren't angels who liked popping in and out of their lives, that they weren't neck-deep in shit, as Bobby liked to say, with the floodwaters rising.

Something would come along to dispel the illusion of familiarity, Sam was sure of it. It was only a matter of time. But that didn't mean he couldn't enjoy it while he could.

To distract himself from thinking too hard and being his own little black raincloud, he cleared his throat. "Did Balthazar seem kinda cagey to you when he kicked us off the property?"

Dean snorted, but his hands tightened on the wheel. "Cagey? The dude is worse than a sack of cats," he said. "His nervous tics have nervous tics. If he swears to me that something is the truth, I check with three independent sources before I believed him. He's up to something, no doubt."

"I agree." It was a fact of nature. The sun came up, the north was cold, Balthazar schemed like a fox. Sam didn't know about Balthazar in the other timeline, except for the vague notes in Dad's journal and on the poster board Dean had mutilated before tossing the whole thing in Sam's lap to straighten out. But this Balthazar, the one who had come in before all hell broke loose, he didn't think was malicious. If Balthazar was scheming, Sam had faith that he was doing it with the greater good in mind.

Still, the fatalistic part of Sam's brain couldn't help but wonder why Balthazar had kicked them out of Sioux Falls, and what new disaster they'd have to cope with when they got back. Before he got too in-depth with that depressing line of thought, he changed the subject. "You hear from Cas yet?"

Perhaps it was the wrong thing to say, because Dean's tension ratcheted up way past eleven. The leather-wrapped steering wheel creaked in protest under his grip. Castiel had been gone for hours. Long enough to make Dean start worrying. Though, if Sam were being brutally honest, he'd say Dean had started worrying about three seconds after Cas had taken off, and was now reaching the point just below full panic. "No," Dean said tersely. "Moron hares off to sneak under the nose of his big douchebag brother and doesn't bother checking in. I'm going to kill him when he gets back."

When, not if. Sam didn't think Dean even considered using the "if" variation, because in his head, there was no version of this that didn't end with Castiel back and safe. He opened his mouth to ask what-if, but then shut it again abruptly. After all the things they'd been through, death and resurrection and demons and angels and time travel and monsters, surviving every single thing thrown at them, time and time again… They had a pretty good track record of coming out maybe not smelling like roses, but definitely landing on top of the crap-heap instead of drowning beneath it.

Dean glanced away from the road, a quick look at him. "What about Gabriel? Any word from him?"

It was Sam's turn to tense. Castiel, at least, had informed Dean where he was going, if he hadn't invited opinions as to the sanity of it. Gabriel, on the other hand, had taken off without so much as telling Sam he was leaving, let alone where he was going or what he was doing. He scowled, uncertainty and insecurity chewing at his gut. Had he been reading way more than Gabriel intended into what had happened in the library?

"Whoa. Sore point, obviously." Dean sounded amused. "That's a whole new class of bitch-face you've got going on there. What's wrong, Samantha? Your boyfriend dump you?"

"He's not my boyfriend," Sam muttered. "Can we talk about something else, please?"

"Yeah." But silence rode in the car like an unwelcome passenger, until Dean finally cleared his throat and switched on the radio. Sam hated Journey with a depth of passion normally only reserved for demons, but he was nonetheless happy to hear the strains of "Wheel in the Sky" instead of the uncomfortable quiet.

The mile markers rolled by, and Journey rolled into Styx. The border between Nebraska and Colorado was almost upon them before Dean spoke again.

"I'm sure they're fine." Dean didn't really sound all that sure.

"Yeah. Probably." He tried praying to Gabriel, just a quick Archangel Gabriel, where the hell are you? But there was no reply.

This time, the silence was frustrated and angry, and it persisted halfway through the state of Colorado, to right outside the mountain motel where Ellen and Jo had agreed to meet them.

=0=

The silence after his pronouncement of the impending Apocalypse was deafening. Gabriel didn't twitch, because he was surrounded and outnumbered, and the pagan gods were all focused on him. If he twitched, they'd jump him. He had no concerns they outclassed him; if it came down to a brawl, the odds were decidedly in his favor, not theirs. Not that they knew that. But this was intended to be a meeting from which they could build a partnership into stopping his douchebag brother from breaking all of Daddy's toys. It would put a decided damper on the whole thing if it ended in fisticuffs.

Yet that seemed to be the way it was going to go. Chair legs scraped again as Odin stood, expression thunderous. "Loki Laufeyson," he snarled. "A pox on the day I ever brought you to my hearth! You gather us with underhanded, sly treachery. What plot are you now hatching?"

Gabriel rolled his eyes. "Why is no one ever happy to see me? It's always, 'Loki, you can't feed Fenrir under the table' and 'you're a murdering, backstabbing, honorless craven, Loki'. Seriously, no one can ever say, 'hey Loki, how's it going?' Even you, Dad. If I weren't as well-adjusted as I am, I'd have serious self-confidence issues."

Mercury, ever the smarmy, pacifistic worm, rose with his hands outstretched. Gabriel had to grudgingly give him some credit; he still had blood staining his chin from the last time he'd tried that. "Peace, fellow gods," Mercury said, making calming gestures. "He's gone to a lot of trouble with this gathering. Let's at least hear Loki out."

Gabriel shot him a look. "Thanks," he said sourly. Mercury smiled back at him, pleased the same way a puppy would be. It was a marvel he wasn't wagging his tail.

Odin remained standing for a moment, glancing left and right. Lord Ganesha didn't seem interested in joining the outrage, Kali was almost as still as an angel, and Zao Shen just sat with his eyes fixed on Gabriel, stroking his beard in thought. Baldur, of course, remained stuck to his chair, silenced by Gabriel's will, fury in his eyes. Odin glared daggers, but sat back down. Gabriel let out the breath he'd been holding.

They were all paying attention. The half the hard part was over. Now, he just had to convince them where their best interests lay. Good luck with that, Gabriel.

"Here's the deal, kids," he said, clasping his hands behind his head. "The angels in Heaven and the demons of hell are doing their damnedest to light this candle and get it all over with. Let the chips fall where they will. And they'll succeed too. They're really, really good at breaking stuff. The world is a snow-globe, and most of those dickwads are trying to smash it to see what's inside."

Kali snorted. "I'm not concerned with angels," she said haughtily. "They bleed, the same as anyone. And demons? Don't make me laugh. Those pathetic halfbreeds are no threat."

Ganesha slowly nodded his accord. "Indeed," he said. "Let El deal with his unruly flock of infants. This is no matter for us to get involved with."

Gabriel's hackles rose at the implication that he was an infant. He'd been old when Ganesha had been suckling the elephant's teat, and he was of half a mind to explain it all in detail to the fat prick. He instead smirked his most aggravating, sly smirk. "Thirty million Christians in India would disagree with you. Sure, it's only a fraction of the population, but when you add in the rest of the world… that's an awful lot of souls angels can tap. An awful lot of power to throw around. I think, I mean, my math might be wrong here, but I think that at that point it becomes a matter you're involved in, whether you want to be or not."

More silence, but this one had the faint tang of disbelief and – dare he say it? – a hint of fear. Gabriel's eyes flicked between them. They were always hard to read, this lot of backstabbing, self-interested, ancient monsters, but he was pretty sure he was getting through to them.

"And what would all this power do, Loki?" The All-Father hadn't quite lost all his hostility, but at least he wasn't ramping up to brawl it out.

A shock ran through his system, and only the barest thread of self-control prevented him from showing it. Sam was praying to him. Irreverent and short as it had been, it still reverberated through Gabriel like a loud, clear bell. But he couldn't spare the attention right now to devote more than a second to realize he'd gone off without telling Sam where he was going. Oops.

Sam, once he explained himself, would understand. Right?

Not that he could think about all that right now. Odin was still waiting for an answer to his sneering question, Baldur was clearly gathering power to for a laughably pitiful attempt to break out of Gabriel's hold on him, Kali eying him like a side of sacred beef – not a new expression, Gabriel had seen it before, many a time… Now was not the time to let his attention wander for even a second.

"Well," he drawled, playing the Trickster to the hilt. "I wouldn't go so far as to presume anything…But it's a safe bet that, after all the fireworks settle down, the rebuilding efforts would probably involve wiping clean the Earth of all of us delightful pagan folk. It's hard to have a Christian heaven on earth with the degenerates heathening up the place."

"And what," Kali said, with less venom than her previous statements, but still enough of a bite to kill a man, "would you have us do?"

Gabriel grinned. He had them now. He raised a finger. "Ah, but that's the beautiful thing. I have a plan. Well, more of a proposal. Well…" He screwed up his face thoughtfully. "You're all going to hate it. But you're intelligent." Debateable. "Observant." Hadn't noticed an archangel among them for eons, couldn't in fact tell there was one right in front of them now, but really… who was keeping score? "And most importantly, in possession of an excellent sense of self-preservation." The only truth in this string of ass-kissing. "So let me tell you how this is going to work. I've got a line on some hunters who are all up in arms and anti-apocalypse…"

=0=

Castiel blinked, and he was awake.

The song had long set. He was in a park, seated on a bench alone, but his ears were ringing with the echoes of angelic wings as if someone had just departed. He smelled of smoke and burnt sage, wind and sun, and there was a gap in his memory exactly the length of time between now and when he'd relinquished control over the Vessel to his host. For an angel who took pride in his perfect memory, it was disconcerting beyond belief to suddenly have a void where experience should be.

It wasn't completely empty, however. Castiel had the feeling that something momentous had occurred in the missing time, but he had no idea of what that might be.

He reached for Jimmy, now back in the depths of Castiel's Grace, but it seemed that reclaiming his body, even for so short a time, had tired the human to exhaustion. Jimmy was so deeply asleep Castiel could not even reach his dreaming mind.

Something had happened. Something immense and important.

"Sir, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to move along."

Castiel blinked, and looked up to see a woman dressed in a blue uniform, with a radio attached to her shoulder. A shiny nameplate on her breast read "Deschel", pinned to the shirt under a star-shaped badge. A police officer. Though he had not encountered any personally to this point, his instructions from Dean were very clear. Should he ever find himself confronted alone by a police officer, he was to disengage as soon as possible. Jimmy would have a Missing Persons report, whatever that was, and the less attention Castiel had from law enforcement, the better.

Still, he could not leave without knowing what had brought her attention to him in the first place. "I am sorry, am I not supposed to be seated here?"

The officer's lips pursed. Castiel did not mean to read her thoughts, but she was a loud broadcaster, and they were very near the surface. Her guard was dropping a little, because he had not responded aggressively, or with a lack of self-control. With a start, he realized she'd thought he'd been a drug addict, and she was relieved to see that he would not be the fourth meth-head she'd had to deal with this night.

"Not this long, sir," she said. "There are loitering laws. We've had reports that you've been here, unresponsive, for hours, and you've been kind of scaring the neighbourhood kids."

"Ah." Slowly, as to not alarm her, he stood. "I apologize. I…lost track of time. It will not happen again."

Her lips twitched, this time in a hidden smile Castiel read on her face as easily as a grin. "See that it doesn't. Have a nice night, sir."

Castiel merely inclined his head and, to not arouse further suspicion, began walking away. Something important, immense, had happened, and he had no access to the memory of it. More, he'd been as a statue on a park bench long enough to alarm the local human population.

What had Jimmy done?

=0=

Bobby might have been wise enough to skedaddle when Balthazar made it clear he wanted the humans gone, wise enough to know that arguing with an archangel who'd made up his mind about something was about as futile as arguing with a hungry bear. But that didn't mean he'd go far. Under different circumstances, maybe he woulda argued anyway, but with his home in ruins, his livelihood destroyed… Maybe he hadn't argued because he'd wanted to get clear of that heartbreaking rubble heap for awhile.

But instead of leaving town, as Dean and Sam had done, to try and make contact with other hunters in the general area, he holed up in the Sioux Falls university library, hiding away in the stacks as the library closed for the night to avoid anyone else telling him he wasn't wanted. His concentration was shot to shit, rage and helplessness and outrage all swirling around in his head until he damn near couldn't see straight let alone think straight, but he sat there at a table in the darkened library, scanning over books in the religious studies section on Christianity and angelology, looking for whatever Sam might have missed.

He wasn't getting anything done, and he knew it. But it was either this, or head to McLeon's in town, and if he hit the bar, he wasn't going anywhere but the drunk tank to dry out when he was done. And he didn't want to dull the pain. Didn't want to get drunk enough to go spoiling for a fight with idjits half his age and a quarter his experience. Didn't want another drunk and disorderly on his record or, Christ forbid, assault charges. He'd gone this long without any garbage like that sticking to him, and he wasn't going to haul attention his way just because some angelic dick or three had screwed with him.

Sam was thorough, but Bobby had been doing this a lot longer. He wasn't as quick on the keyboard, or as fast a reader. Had to use his damn finger to follow the words along, squinting in the faint glow of his penlight, but he had been doing this a helluva lot longer than Sam had. Knew cross-searching like the back of his hand. Had a mind

"Dammit." He growled and shoved the book away, scrubbing his face with his hands. Who was he kidding? He was old and ornery on the best of days. Trying to work in his present mood was just an exercise in futility. Screw it; he was going to go home. He might not have a roof to sleep under, but his camping equipment was in the back of his truck. He'd pitch his damn tent in a clear patch of ground if he had to, but he'd sleep on his own damn property if he wanted to.

He wasted about ten minutes putting all the books back where he'd gotten them from. The ladies who had charge of this place were nice enough, and he didn't like leaving messes for them. When he was done, and he couldn't put it off any longer, he got in his truck and drove home.

It was a terse ten minutes, with his blood pressure jumping up another few points with every minute that passed. His teeth were grinding themselves to dust as he rounded the twists and turns of the road leading to his property. He really didn't want to set eyes on the utter crap-heap his life had become over the last few days, but no one, not an overfeathered jackass, not the gigantic dick in the sky, not even Lucifer himself, was gonna chase him off his land.

The sight that greeted him was not at all what he was expecting.

Singer Salvage, the house and the garage, rose above the chain-link gate, wreathed in moonlight and shadow.

With a startled oath, he stomped on the brake when he realized he was about to drive straight through the closed gate. The nose of his truck skewed left and right before screeching to a halt, and Bobby shakily shifted into park. By the time his breathing was something more normal, the adrenaline had just about subsided.

He got out of the truck, leaving the door ajar. The truck beeped in irritation, but Bobby ignored that too. With trembling hands, he lifted the latch and paced several disbelieving steps onto the property, unable to believe his eyes.

He broke a second later, running up the front steps of the house like a man half his age, jerking open the door and stumbling to a stop in the living room. His books were in their usual haphazard stacks. A bottle of Glenfidditch stood on his desk. Pictures lined the walls, glassed-in snapshots of time. The damn smudge marks where he'd measured Sam and Dean's growth were even on the wall.

The rest of the house was the same. Room after room, just like he'd left it. Things he thought were buried in wreckage, restored and pristine. Laundry in the basket, neatly folded and ready to be put away. The pantries were stuffed, the fridge fully-stocked.

"Aw hell," he said, and had to stop for a moment to rest on his elbows on the windowsill in the living room. Bobby's chest was tight, his eyes burned, and there was something lodged in his throat. He took a deep breath, leaning his forehead against the cold glass.

As he leaned there, something out-of-place caught his eye. A gleam of white marble where there had been no such thing before. Bobby lifted his head to check it out.

There was a new addition to the property. Near the elms where he'd been married, where he'd buried his wife, stood a small stone mausoleum, bas-relief columns supporting a roof on which perched a stone angel. His eyesight was blurring for some reason, cheeks kept getting wet. But he thought he saw Balthazar curled up on the stone in front of the crypt doors, a tipped-over bottle beside him. Above the door was clearly engraved SINGER.

"Aw hell," he said again, and wiped his eyes. "You goddamn idjit." Then he took a deep breath, fixed his hat, and went out to collect his drunken, unconscious angel from the doorstep of his wife's new home.