Trouble With The Trickster || Gabriel - Supernatural

-18-

Dean pulled into the cemetery as the night drew in, getting out and grabbing the flashlights from the trunk before handing one each to Sam and I and keeping one for himself. He didn't even offer Henry one, knowing he'd have some crazy remark about them.

"These were my friends... my mentors," Henry told us as Dean checked the names on the headstones, "our last defence against the Abaddon's of the world..."

Dean shone the light over a particular one, "Here's your buddy, Albert Magnus."

"Albertus Magnus," Henry observed, "He was hardly a buddy. He was the greatest alchemist of the middle ages."

"Okay, so... why is he buried here?"

Henry glanced over as I asked, still slightly jumpy around me, "He's not. His was the alias we'd use when going incognito. I believe someone planted his name in that article... so that if a Man of Letters came looking for answers, he'd know something was amiss..."

"So someone wanted you to come to this grave," Sam caught on, searching the ground with his flashlight.

"The question is why..." Dean shone his light over a symbol on the headstone like the one on the box, looking at it questioningly. "That's our crest. The Aquarian Star, representing great magic and power."

"Hmm," Sam scanned over the other stones before landing on one, "It's on all the tombstones except for this one - uh, Larry Ganem..."

Henry crouched down beside it and looked at the different symbol engraved into Larry's stone, "The Haitian symbol for speaking to the dead. This is the message." He looked up at the three of us, "You guys ever exhume a body?"

Sam and Dean looked at each other before Dean sighed, "I'll get the shovels..."

So that's how, five minutes later, the three of us were digging up this poor guy's grave while Henry unhelpfully watched on from the sidelines. Sam tried to tell me they didn't need my help but I was having none of it - I came on the hunt to help and, so help me, that was what I was gonna do.

After about an hour of digging, Dean's shovel hit something hard, unearthing a coffin, "Tell me how we got stuck doing this again?"

"Hey, it's your grandad, not mine..."

Sam knelt down and opened the coffin, lifting the lid and revealing a skeleton wearing a uniform.

"Hey, was Larry a World War One vet?" Henry shook his head at Dean's question. "Well, uh, who's the stiff?"

Sam picked up a set of metal tags from the skeleton's clothes, "Captain Thomas J. Carey the third. That mean anything to you?"

Henry shook his head again. Dean looked up at him, "Well, somebody wanted you to see this, so maybe that somebody is Larry. Maybe he survived the attack and is hiding out with this guy's identity?"

"Okay. What are we waiting for, then?" Henry got up and began walking back to the Impala, "Cover this up. Let's be on our way."

"Yes, sir. Three bags full, sir..." I sighed sarcastically, grabbing my shovel again and attacking the mounds of dirt we'd barely just created. Sam laughed tiredly before climbing out of the hole and helping Dean and I fill it back in. "Your grandpa isn't gonna be much help in this, right?"

"You could've just scared him again with your eyes," Dean pointed out, "Which was pretty cool, by the way..."

I shook my head, "It needs strong emotions and I'm too exhausted for any emotions right now... this vessel gets tired very easily, I think I've got a slow metabolism..."

"Wow, who'd have thought a slow metabolism could slow a Nephalem down?" Sam laughed again, "Only one thing can stop you - and it's exercise?"

"Seems like it... I'll have to talk to my Dad about finding a better vessel..."

Finally, we finished up filling the grave and made our way back over to where Henry had been sat in the car for the past however long. Dean drove back to a motel just outside of Normal and we checked in, careful not to use our real names - my alias became 'Ms. Jett'.

Sam got his laptop out of the trunk as soon as we pulled in, immediately setting it up on the table for Dean and I while he rummaged around in his backpack and found a battered journal. Dean typed in 'Thomas J. Carey III', getting a whole page of results back and scrolling down it.

"Hey, what about the County records?" I suggested pointing to the link third from the top of the page.

He opened it and scanned through the record under the Captain's name, "According to this... Tom Carey lives in Lebanon, Kansas, and is a very happy hundred-and-twenty-seven year-old..."

"Hang on... there's something about Abaddon in Dad's journal..." Sam interrupted, passing his finger over the page he was on, "Apparently, she's a Knight of Hell..."

"A what now?"

"Knights of Hell are hand-picked by Lucifer himself," Henry explained from the chair in the corner, "They are of the first-fallen, first-born demons."

"So, very pure, very strong?" Sam guessed and he nodded.

"Legend has it that Archangels had killed all of them," dammit, Gabriel... "which, as we have witnessed, is not the case... You say that journal was your father's? May I?" Sam passed the small, leather-bound book to him. "I intended to use one of these. I sent away for one the day before my initiation..." he opened the first page and looked at something, "As a matter of fact, judging by my initials here, this one, I believe..."

"That was yours?"

Henry looked over at Dean, "It must have arrived after... I'm beginning to gather I don't make it back from this time, do I?"

"We don't know for sure," Sam told him as he looked down sadly, "All we do know is that Dad never saw you again... he thought you ran out on him..."

"John was a legacy. I was supposed to teach him the way of the Letters..."

Dean rolled his eyes at me as if to say 'here we go again', "Well, he learned things a little differently... the hard way. Surviving a lonely childhood, a stinking war... only to get married and have his wife taken by a demon... and later killed by one himself. That man got a bum rap around every turn. But you know what? He kept going. And in the end, he did a hell of a lot more good than he did bad..."

This was all news to me, too. I had no idea how shitty the hunter life could be but now I guessed John Winchester was probably the poster child for it. I just hoped Sam and Dean didn't follow him down - they were nice guys, they deserved a good life...

That thought made me think of Gabriel; I'd gotten so mad at him for mentioning a previous love when he himself is thousands of years old... perhaps love is the only thing that keeps him sane in this messed up universe...

"I'm sorry. I wish I had been there for him," Henry said with no real emotion in his face or his voice. I felt Dean tense up beside me before he got up and walked over to the door.

"Yeah, it's a little late now, don't you think?" Dean countered angrily.

"It's the price we pay for upholding great responsibility. We know that." Dean glared at Henry like he was imagining wrapping his hands around his neck. He was beginning to irk me, too.

"Your responsibility was to your family, not some glorified book club!" Dean's voice got louder through his gritted teeth as he pulled on his jacket.

"I was a legacy. I had no choice." Bullshit.

Dean scoffed, "Yeah, you keep telling yourself that..." The door slammed as he stormed out into the parking lot and headed towards the Impala. I glanced at Sam before rushing after him - I didn't want to hang around Henry any more than he did...