RENEGADE "ANGEL"

Back in Black, PART II

Far below, thousands of feet down, lights glowed a lovely, molten gold. These lights were the signs of life, of families around dinner tables, of friends out at a bar, of busybodies working late until they got the job done, of students studying until they got that degree.

Cora's fingers tightened around the necklace she hadn't taken off since she was four, once belonging to her mother. She wondered, very dimly, if Sammy had managed to get his degree. If he'd married that girl he'd told her about, before she left and didn't look back and didn't answer his calls, his texts, his letters—

It's gonna be fine, the angel on her shoulder whispered. It's all gonna be okay.

Of course, angels didn't talk like that. They spoke in very holy tones. At least, they did in the Bible. Cora hadn't met an angel, and wasn't sure if they talked to humans these days. Not to her, at least. Demons had her family marked for certain.

The plane landed smoothly, and Cordelia could almost hear Dean's sigh of relief, a mimic of one from their childhood, when he'd first discovered how much he disliked planes. That was part of the reason Cora had decided to hide out in Europe—there was no chance her family was going to book a flight and maybe find her, unlike in the U.S. where all it took was a quick road trip and an unfortunate incident where they met in a street of a small, rural town.

As she walked through the airport, leaving it behind at last, Cora made the second call in the past eight hours to the one person she'd kept contact with after faking her death.

"I'm at the—"

"The entrance. Yes, I see you, kid. I'll be right over."

Not five minutes later, a beat-up and mismatched '71 Chevelle rolled to a stop in front of her. Cora deposited her bags and got into the passenger's seat.

"Hey, kid," said Bobby Singer.

"Hi, Uncle Bobby. Er—Bobby. Sorry." Six years and she still hadn't gotten out of the habit of calling Bobby her uncle, just like John had referred to him in her youth. "Thanks for getting me."

"Have you figured out how you're going to your brothers?"

Sighing, Cora looked at her lap. "Right to the chase, eh?"

"It's important, Cora. If you don't do this right, Dean'll kill you."

Cora laced her fingers together. "Yeah. I...I know."

Silence reigned as Bobby left the airport and drove back in the direction of his house. Cora had arranged to stay with him until she found out where her brothers were, and figured out how to tell them she was alive and had come back to help stop the apocalypse.

The land they passed was familiar. Unbidden, memories of Cora's childhood dominated her mind, swamping her with regret and bitterness and pain. She remembered crashing her first car along this road, shaking and calling Bobby, because she knew Bobby wouldn't leave her high and dry. She remembered speeding to go find Dean, who had been gone for too many hours. She remembered taking a walk out here to get away from John and Dean during a fight. She remembered bleeding out on this road and calling Dean because his number was the only one she remembered after a hit-and-run on that same night.

It was only once they had reached a back road so disused it was more dirt instead of asphalt nowadays that conversation struck up again.

"How'd you figure out about the apocalypse anyway?"

"I moved to Europe, I'm not dead," Cora said. "I have connections."

"And did your connection tell you about the angel?"

It was a good thing Cordelia had not been driving, because if she had, she would have crashed the car. "The—the angel?"

"I'll take that as a no." Bobby sighed and turned down the road that led to his house. "I wouldn't believe it myself if I hadn't been there when he showed up."

"An angel," Cora whispered. "Which one?"

"His name's Castiel, if he's to be believed."

"You think he wouldn't be?"

Bobby hesitated. "You—you heard how Dean started the apocalypse, right?"

Cora shook her head.

It took some moments for Bobby to speak again. "He broke out of hell."

Cordelia's heart skipped a beat. "He—broke out?"

"Yes."

"But that would mean—"

"Dean died, Cora."

It felt as though all the oxygen had been sucked from her blood.

"He was down there for six months. Sixty years hell-time."

Sixty years.

"H-how?" Cora wasn't entirely sure she wanted the answer, but she wasn't sure she could get around it for much longer anyway.

"Long story short, he made a deal to save Sam."

"To save Sam? Why did Sam need saving?! How dangerous can a college be?"

Bobby glanced over at her, his gaze solemn. "There's a lot you've missed out on, Cora."

"Evidently!"

"But I'll let them do the explaining." Bobby stopped the car in front of his house. "And there's one thing I forgot to tell you, Cora. You don't have to go looking for Sam and Dean. They're already here."