Buffy folded her arms, green eyes narrowed cooly at the suddenly very guilty looking fivesome. Castiel's stomach clenched, and he resisted the urge to duck his head down. The look on the Slayer's face bore no comfort, irritation and cold fury radiated off of her. Castiel and Lucifer shared glances, two enemies suddenly united by the same fear. After all, the scene she burst in on did not look good for them. Sam sprawled across the floor bleeding from a cut on his face, Dean holding a gun in one hand, the binding cuffs in the other. Cas was holding a broken guitar above his head, ready to hit the Devil again and Crowley, well, Crowley just looked guilty.

"Exactly what is going on here?" Her gaze moved from him to Dean, to Sam and Crowley; landing on Lucifer's current vessel for several seconds, before flicking back to Cas again. She didn't raise her voice. She didn't even move. But the presence of The Slayer filled the room, rolling off the blonde human in violent, heaving waves.

There is a very good reason why the supernatural world fears the name Buffy Summers.

"Just a little reunion, getting the gang together again. Celebrating our heroic victory over Amara and such. Did you miss the invite?" Crowley asked smoothly, although the slight bobbing of his throat betrayed his true feelings. Her lips thinned, and it did not take any practice in human behavior patterns to recognize how unimpressed she was by the thin excuse the demon had offered.

The infamous red scythe appeared with one easy twist of Buffy's wrist. Collectively they all took a step back. She raised one golden eyebrow.

"Try again." The order cut through the frozen silence. The men all tensed, the prey part of their brains screaming loudly as the apex predator in the room asserted itself. Even Lucifer looked cowed. And of everyone in the room, the archangel was the most likely to survive direct combat with the slayer. Everyone took a second step back, dropping weapons to the floor and subtly trying to straighten their clothing out. Cas has a sudden insight into the human saying of being caught with a hand in the proverbial cookie jar.

"Fine!" Lucifer throws his hands up, the binding cuffs dangling off his wrist like a demented bracelet. Sam and Dean exchange shocked looks at the devil breaking first.

"I'm back in the game! With the evil and mayhem and destruction. Sue me! I'm Evil. Capital letters and everything. Besides, little Miss. Slayer may have slayed the big bad First, but I made evil trendy. That bastard might have invented it, but I perfected it." He groused, folding his arms across his own chest petulantly. Dean turned to the fallen angel.

"Why are you doing this?" He asked gruffly. The devil sighed and collapsed in a chair he conjured onto the stage.

"You and God made up. You forgave him, what would he think?" Sam scolded. There was a loud snort, and Lucifer, if possible, sank even lower into his chair, all loose limbs and defiance eternally etched into his borrowed face. Cas wondered how he could have ever believed that the younger Winchester and Lucifer were the same damn thing; perfect mirrors of each other. Celestial and human reflections of the same story.

No, they might have been cut from the same cloth, but Sam had been made into something entirely different than the Morningstar. Something that had taken him an embarrassing amount of time to figure out. Something heaven still hasn't. Something some days he doubts even Sam and Lucifer grasp.

"I'm not especially interested in his opinion. Dear old dad, he finally apologized for abandoning me. And what's the very next thing he does?" The devil's voice cracked, hysteria slowly seeping into his voice.

"He ditches me." The laugh that burst out of him was distinctly wet, and Cas wondered if Satan understood grief.

"He ditched all of you too, by the way. He just rides off into the sunset with Auntie Amara. He needed my help, and he'd say anything to get it. His words, your words, they mean nothing. Don't you get it? This is all meaningless. Heaven, Hell, this world. If it ever meant anything, that moment is past. Nothing down here but a bunch of hopeless distraction addicts, so filled with emptiness, so desperate to fill up the void... they don't mind being served another stale rerun of a rerun of a rerun. You know what my plan is? I don't have one. I'm just gonna keep on smashing Daddy's already broken toys and make you watch." Buffy groaned, and the scythe vanished with a second fluid twist of her wrist. Her aggression was instantly replaced with a tired annoyance that Sam and Dean sometimes applied to the other after someone has been particularly irritating. Usually when Dean refused to help with research or when Sam complained about Dean's music too loudly.

"Daddy issues? Really? That's why you're causing mayhem again? Face it bucko, nothing we do has meaning unless you give it meaning. Slaying, hunting, living, all that is an endless fight. It's hard and it's everyday. We're never going to win. But we're never going to lose either. Of course it's all meaningless! So what? Lucifer, the humans you hate so much have it figured out better than you!" Buffy groaned and massaged her temples.

"Just jump ship from that body and cause me normal problems, not the kind of issues that require the Red Witch to portal me halfway across the world at three in the morning. God's not watching. He doesn't care if you break his toys, you're not getting back at him. Trust me, my dad ditched me too. He doesn't care if you break the toys he doesn't care about. Don't make me slay you Lucifer. I'm letting you go just this once. I won't do it again." The slayer pointed one hand towards the door and with a bright flash of white angel grace infused light Vince Vincente collapsed to the floor, dead. Buffy wordlessly glared at Crowley and the demon vanished just as quickly.

"What the hell dude?" Dean growled out, stalking towards the slayer. Buffy held up her hand, cutting off whatever else the hunter was going to say.

"Not another word Winchester. I'm tired and I'm about two words away from slaying the next thing that annoys me. I need coffee." Buffy turned on her heal and abruptly left the way she came, only pausing at the door for a fraction of a second to glance back at Castiel.

"Well? You coming?" He didn't waste another second, scrambling to his feet and following after her into the dark streets of LA. They left the ruined theater behind them, left Sam and Dean, left the fight for another time. For now they walked towards... what Castiel isn't sure but towards something. It's far too late at night for anyplace that would serve coffee of good enough quality to satisfy a tired slayer to still be open.

Buffy strides ahead of him, and even with her shorter legs manages to stay in front of him. Silence stretches out between the two of them, and she hasn't looked back to make sure he followed since she'd told him to follow. But more than his unshakable faith in the Winchester brothers, is his unbreakable loyalty to the blonde Slayer. She didn't need to check if he followed. They both knew he simply would.

They walk into a bar, not much more than a hole in the wall but still leaps and bounds nicer than most of the places Dean and Sam usually frequented. She leads the way to a quiet table, and doesn't even look up at when she orders both a strong drink and a coffee. She glares at the raised eyebrows her order brings and the waiter wisely keeps his mouth shut and turns to Cas. After a frozen moment of hesitation, Castiel orders himself a beer. Even after all his time on earth, he has still yet to build the habit of partaking in human needs like food and drink. Their drinks arrive with a gentle clinking of glass and Buffy leans towards the table her eyes focused on him intensely. To his immense relief, all of her previous irritation seemed to have bled away, leaving behind only the exhaustion he could see ringing her eyes. Also something else, but he isn't sure what it is. Mostly he's just proud for noticing it at all.

"Why did you ask me to stay?" Buffy asked quietly. Of anything she might have asked, that was the one question he would not have expected from her. Not since she'd just smiled at him a little pityingly and walked away after they'd helped God and Amara reconcile almost three months previous. Since then, he'd had no communication with her. Not that he'd had much time to even try considering everything that had been happening between the Men of Letters and Mary Winchester and Crowley and Lucifer.

He frowns a little, considering his own response, unsure of how to answer. He could tell her he wanted another hunter around, but that wasn't exactly true. He could also say that they needed help with Lucifer, but that wasn't true either. Otherwise he would have called and asked her again more recently.

He figured, after all the mess with the leviathans and the sneaking around and the lying and the utter disappointment he'd caused, honesty is the best policy. Especially with Buffy. He couldn't bear it if she wore the same mistrust on her face that he sometimes still caught on Dean's.

"I... am not sure." Castiel finally admitted, the words tearing out of him. He really didn't. At the time he'd plucked up all his courage, bolstered by the fact that they'd survived the battle against one of the oldest and most primordial beings in the world, to ask her. It simply had felt like the thing to ask. Something he had wanted.

Buffy nodded slowly, a small smile spreading across her face, like his answer had actually meant something.

"That's all I care about for tonight. You can catch me up on everything else in the morning." Buffy inhaled her coffee, sighing happily as she set her mug back down on the warm wooden table top. Cas couldn't move, completely thrown by what he had just heard. Buffy leaned forward, elbows propped on the table, green eyes glittering with something he's pretty sure is amusement.

"So, Cas. Where are we headed next?"