Perception

High Blood Pressure

If there was one thing that gave Bobby high blood pressure, it was his boys with supernatural creatures. Now there were apparently two in his house, one he had already accepted into his little family. And if there was one other thing that gave him high blood pressure, it was upset family.

And to be frank, Castiel was a complete wreck. His usually serene expression was distraught and his hands were shaky, knees pulled up to his chest. Dean patted his knee when his shaking got too intense, but otherwise kept his distance, although Bobby could tell that that wasn't what either really wanted. But would Dean ever admit that? Bobby be damned if he did on his first.

Gabriel was sitting in a kitchen chair in front of the TV, gnawing on a Charleston Chew and frowning deeply. Bobby would have been too, if he wasn't pulling so much amusement from this.

"Alright," said Sam, gripping his beer a little tightly. "What's your 'great explanation'?"

Castiel frowned and made quotations with his fingers quietly. Wow, Bobby thought, he's a toddler in a man's body.

"Well," started Gabriel, with a deep sigh and wandering eyes. He looked defensive. "Okay, I'm just going to start at the beginning. Mary Winchester was never supposed to die."

There was a shocked silence before Dean growled, "What?"

Gabriel held up his hands. "Whoa there, tiger. Let me finish before you break your hand on my face. Okay, so, it was never part of the Divine Plan to kill your mom. That was kind of Azazel's own thing. Mary and John were supposed to live long, happy, monster-free lives. Mary would've died in her sleep at eighty six, and John was supposed to die about a month after her. Dean-o should've gone on to finish high school, get an engineering degree, and marry a guy named Jimmy Novak--"

"Wait!" Dean yelled. "Marry? A guy?!"

Castiel cocked his head. "He was to marry my brother?"

Gabriel grimaced and made his candy disappear, miracling a sucker into its place. "Let me finish, Cassie."

Castiel scowled.

The archangel laughed nervously. "Anywho, all you Winchesters were supposed to have happy normal lives. Then Azazel screwed that up. Meanwhile, in Heaven, Cassie had already grown attached to you guys. He watched you and he felt all your emotions, and he helped sometimes, which was against the Divine Plan, but you had already strayed from that. So when Dean-o went to Hell, my littlest brother dived in there all by himself to get him out.

"Well, God disappeared after he created the last angel on the eleventh day, who happened to be Cas. Michael - archangel, too - decided he would take charge, and he didn't like Cas going against the Revised Divine Plan, so he repressed his grace and threw him down to North Dakota."

He turned to Castiel, now. "Castiel," he started, "all of your memories from your entire life, are fabrications. Your dead brother, Jimmy, is actually your vessel." He paused. "You vessel is the guy you're wearing right now. Your true form is a multidimensional wavelength of celestial energy, taller than the Chrysler Building. You'd kill everyone in this room without him."

Castiel blinked slowly and stared blankly.

"Well," said Gabriel, standing and clapping with a mocking smile on his face. "That's the most serious I've ever been, and I'm never going back. Let's get my little brother all fixed up, shall we?"

Gabriel stood to approach Castiel, but Dean stood and pushed him back. "Don't touch him."

"Oh?"

"Just-" Dean paused and looked back at Castiel, who was still staring ahead blankly. "Just let him process all this. Everything he thinks he's ever known is a lie. Just- wait."

Gabriel looked at the younger angel for a long, tense moment, before nodding and sighing. "Whatever. Just pray when he's ready." Gabriel turned to leave. "See you, Samsquatch. Dean-o. Old Grouch." And then he was gone with a flicker of the lights.

...

If it weren't Heaven, it probably would have been storming horribly, because that's what the weather does when Evil Plans are afoot.

Well, can plans really be evil when angels are making them? Really, they would just be Mildly Doubtful Plans. But for all intents and purposes, these plans will be called evil, because Mildly Doubtful Plans don't sound particularly foreboding.

Michael stood over the viewfinder to Robert Singer's home, where he could see two of his brothers and the Winchesters sitting. The wholly traitorous brother - He Who Shall Not Be Named - seemed to be lost in his own thoughts. One of the downsides of the repression was that Michael couldn't read his thoughts, but he knew his brother well enough to know that he was baffled, especially since Michael created the facade on his grace. He was entitled to that knowledge.

Gabriel left then, and the Winchesters started talking quietly amongst themselves, Bobby sitting in the armchair closest to HWSNBN and offering him a beer.

Michael growled lowly and swiped the viewfinder away with a wisp of cloud. HWSNBN just couldn't regain his memories. He would defy the Revised Divine Plan, which really could not happen. Not again. Too much paperwork to be done to revise it again. Well, and the fact that the Antichrist was about to be born, and that needed to happen. The world already had lasted much too long.