"Mom!" Henry legged it into Granny's with his typical, eleven-year-old enthusiasm, and Emma accepted his hug with a casual arm wrapped around him.

"Henry," Emma greeted. "There are some people I'd like you to meet. This Sam and Dean Winchester, my older brothers from when I was younger. Your uncles."

Henry stared at her brothers, who were seated at the booth across from her, case-related papers spread all over the table.

"Uncles?" Henry said, awed.

"Hey, midget," Dean greeted. Sam coughed in protest.

"Hi, Henry. I'm Sam," he added, glaring pointedly at his older brother. "You can call me Uncle if you want to, or just Sam if Uncle makes you uncomfortable."

"You're Mom's brothers? I never knew you had brothers!" Henry turned to look at Emma accusingly.

"I… got separated from my family a long time ago, kiddo," Emma sighed. "I never thought I'd see them again, so I didn't think it would help anything to tell you about a family that you couldn't ever meet. Dad's gone, so you can't ever meet him." Thank God. She had loved John Winchester—she really, really had. But that didn't mean that she wanted him or his 'parenting methods' anywhere near her son. Things that had seemed awesome when she was twelve were now obviously dysfunctional.

"But David's your Dad!" Dean and Sam stared at her. Clearly, they'd missed that little fact when it came up in conversation earlier.

"Yes, Henry, biologically, David is my Dad," Emma agreed. "Just like biologically, I'm your mom, but that doesn't mean that you've stopped thinking of Regina as your mom, too. John was their Dad. I met them when I was twelve, and I travelled with them for three years."

"Best three years of my childhood," Sam assured her. "You know that stupid motel, the one in Creston? It was in my heaven."

"Mine too," Dean chimed in. "Or, more accurately, we share a heaven, and we both found ourselves in that memory."

"I think I should be flattered, but I'm too busy being disturbed by the reminder that you guys have been to heaven. And hell," Emma snarked.

"And purgatory!" Dean added, mock cheerily. "Seriously, though, that David guy? He's your dad? Because I don't think he looked any older than I am."

Ruby came over and set down Henry's hot chocolate, as well as a refill for Emma. Then she handed Dean his beer, while Sam and Emma glared disapprovingly.

"Thanks, baby," Dean said, winking. Ruby grinned and leaned her hip against the table.

"Are you guys in town long?"

"As long as Emma needs us to be," Dean agreed easily. "We travel a lot, so we'll probably visit whenever we get the chance, too."

"That's hot, you know. Guys that take care of their sisters?"

Dean smirked. "I know. So, sweetheart, which fairytale are you from?"

Emma and Sam traded the exact same exasperated look over the table, and it was like none of the past fifteen years had happened. Dean was just generally behaving like a slut, and all was right with the world. "She's Little Red Riding Hood," Henry piped up excitedly.

"So, so far I've met Snow White and Prince Charming, the Evil Queen, Rumplestiltskin, Belle and Little Red? Christ how do you all know each other?"

"And Gabriel," Sam muttered, smacking the back of his head on the booth behind him. "Don't forget Gabriel."

"Gabriel knows everyone," Dean said. "I've made my peace with it and moved on. You know, I'm not even surprised that him and Crowley are friends? It didn't shock me even a little bit. Fu—"

"Dean Winchester, if you swear around my son I will actually castrate you with a pencil," Emma growled.

"Fudge," Dean finished, eyeing her warily. "I would never."

"You didn't have any problems teaching twelve-year-old me a whole bunch of new swearwords," Emma pointed out dryly.

"Damn—Darn it, I was seventeen, get the hell over it already!"

"Dean, you have been sitting at the same table as Henry for all of five minutes, and you've had to stop yourself from swearing three times," Emma said sternly.

"Didn't you have to watch your mouth around Ben?" Sam asked, amused. "I can't imagine that Lisa would have put up with your vocabulary.

"She stopped caring after awhile," Dean whined. "It only took about a month, then she basically told Ben that she'd ground him for the rest of the school year if he repeated anything that I said at school or near his friends' parents. He swore like a truck driver for about a week, and then the novelty wore off, so he dropped into the occasional f-bomb when he stubbed his toe or something."

Dean fell silent, and Emma watched him curiously. The last time that she'd seen him, he'd mentioned a Lisa and her son Ben that he was trying to build a life with. And perhaps they were still together, in some capacity. But Emma knew that a life built on quicksand, lived in crappy motels and money made by credit card fraud and hustling pool in seedy bars wasn't exactly conductive to a successful long-term relationship, especially in a situation like Lisa Braeden's—the woman had a teenage son and a career—she could not just run off with Dean at the drop of a hat, and Dean was not the sort of person that could stay still for any length of time. Especially with Sam out of hell and active in the game.

Still, though, she didn't want to ask in case it brought up bad memories.

"It's over," Dean supplied, able to read her just as well as he had fifteen years ago. "I'd rather not talk about it, but let's just say that that door is closed for good, and Lisa and Ben are both much better off for it."

"I think you'd make a great dad," Emma shot back. She'd always thought so. Dean was excellent with kids, and it was legitimately really sad that he'd probably never get the chance to have any of his own. Hunters… hunters lived short, violent and brutally bloody lives, lives that were mostly relieved to be over when their time came. It was certainly no life for a child. Not that John Winchester had ever realized that.

"I like to think I was," Dean said. "Ben… Ben might as well have been mine, at least for the time that I was with them. Still, though, part of being a dad is making the hard choices, and Ben is much better off without me."

"I'm sorry."

"So," Henry got that 'I'm much older at heart than I should be, and now I'm going to behave like a middle-aged man' look on his face. "What do you two do for a living?"

Emma and Ruby both suppressed snorts. Sam looked faintly bemused. Dean, though, Dean didn't miss a beat.

"We're hunters," he supplied.

"Hunters," Henry repeated skeptically. "Of like, deer, and stuff?"

Dean leaned forward to whisper conspiratorially. "Of monsters. Monsters and demons and things that go bump in the night."

"But I thought that there weren't monsters in this world?" Henry turned to Emma. "That's why Mr. Gold came here, right?"

Emma snorted. "There are plenty of monsters in this world, Henry, just different ones from the monsters in the Enchanted Forest. And even if they didn't exist, humans are just as capable of being monstrous as monsters are." She had seen lots of them, bounty hunting.

"Don't we know it," Dean said. "That's what demons are, you know. Corrupted human souls, from hundreds of years of torturing others down in the pit. I was almost…"

"I know," Emma said. Nobody could blame Dean for breaking under such circumstances—he was the righteous man. She had done some research when the term had first come up in Carver Edlund's lovely little privacy-invasion of a book series, and eventually come up with a quote from a thirteenth century religious text that summed up both the term 'righteous' as used in religion, and Dean's personality as the man that he'd become. Roughly translated, it stated 'He was a righteous man. Heaven had blessed him with a clarity of vision in matters of good and evil. His judgement was absolute. His compassion was without boundaries, his mercy was divine mercy and his anger was the wrath of God.'

But if Dean had broken in that situation, what hope did anyone else have? He'd lasted thirty years on the rack, the guest of honour of hell's most sadistic torturer. Dean probably knew things about how to cause pain in a person that would make Regina's head spin.

Still, this was not the ideal thing to be discussing around Henry.

"There are demons?" Ruby seemed to be genuinely interested in more than flirting with Dean now, leaning in to look at both brothers curiously.

"Everything that you can imagine and everything that you can't," Dean said. "Did you know that you've had an archangel living in your town?"

"An archangel?" Ruby asked. "Like, from the bible?"

"Yeah. The archangel Gabriel, in fact. Angel of Judgement, Holy Messenger, yada yada yada, all that jazz," Dean said.

"Seriously?" Ruby asked incredulously. "Gabriel? Our Gabriel? An angel?"

"Well. He skipped out on heaven a couple of millennia ago and became the Norse trickster God," Dean added.

"Loki," Sam elaborated. "He… um, died, while he was helping us stop the apocalypse, and God saved him by suppressing his Grace—that's like an angel's… being, kind of—into his vessel and sending him into your world. Then he got cursed like the rest of you, and when Emma broke it, he got all his memories back and he had his Grace again, too. He's gone to heaven to try to sort out what's going on upstairs—apparently it's been a gong show since Cas absorbed… you don't really care about that," Sam cut himself off.

"I do," Emma protested. "What happened to Dean's angel boyfriend?"

"He's not my boyfriend!" Dean yelped. "We aren't like that, and even if we were inclined to be, he deserves better than me, anyway."

Sam and Emma exchanged a Look. They had built up quite the repertoire of Dean-related Looks over the years, and it was pleasant to tell that none of them had become incomprehensible. This particular Look managed to address Dean's crippling commitment issues, his inadequacy problem, and the continued disassociation of sex vs. intimacy.

"Well that sucks," Ruby muttered.

"What?"

"All the good ones are gay or taken."

"Not gay," Dean returned. "Bi. Or pan. Whatever you want to call it. And not taken!" He added, glaring at Sam and Emma in turn. "He's not my boyfriend!"

"You and baby bro still haven't worked out your shit, huh, Dean-o?" Gabriel appeared out of thin air, sitting cross-legged in the middle of the table, on top of all of the files that had come out of the Impala's trunk.

Ruby yelped. Sam smacked his forehead on the table in frustration. Henry jumped and Dean let out an undisguisable f-bomb.

"Dean!" Emma protested loudly.

"Sorry, kid. Gah, don't do that, Gabriel!"

"I would've figured that you'd be used to it by now. Hey, Red."

"Hey, Gabriel," Ruby muttered sheepishly. "Can I get you anything? Usual?"

"Yeah, thanks."

"Get off the table!" Ruby called as she retreated.

"Dude, you have a usual?" Dean jabbed. "And you're on first name terms with the waitress?"

"Everyone in this town has a usual," Gabriel returned. Emma nodded in agreement, because what was that if not the truth? "And everyone knows everyone. It got worse when the curse broke, because now we all remember having two lives and two sets of friends. But everyone knows her, pretty much, both as Red and as Ruby. She was one of those people who knew everyone in the Enchanted Forest. Seriously, everyone. I don't know how she did it."

"So who were you, in this little town? You didn't remember who you were, did you?"

"I run the sweetshop."

Dean cackled. "Seriously?"

"You think, even brain-wiped, I'd ever do anything else?" Gabriel asked pointedly, snapping his fingers and conjuring a lollipop out of thin air that he stuck in his mouth. Sam rolled his eyes, and Gabriel winked. "See something you like, Sasquatch?"

"Shut up!" Sam snapped.

"Baby," Gabriel simpered.

"Gabriel, there's a kid less than three feet from you," Sam said irritably. "Flirt with me later if you're going to insist."

"Oh, spare me," Dean lamented dramatically.

"Gabriel," Ruby had returned, a violently blue drink in one hand, and bowl of assorted candy in the other. "Off the table, or I'll get Granny."

"Low," Gabriel accused, pouting, as he slid off of the table and pulled up a chair. Then he softened at the sight of the dark-haired girl, looking a bit out of place and clutching the glass so tightly that her knuckles were whitening. "Ruby. Red. You're a lot of things, but you are not a coward, and you aren't one to be intimidated, just because someone more powerful than you turns up."

"But you're an angel," Ruby protested shakily, setting his drink down. "In the Enchanted Forest, everyone thought that you were just a magician, like Rumplestiltskin or the fairies, but it turns out that you aren't. In the Enchanted Forest, I wouldn't have understood what an angel was, but now I know what the bible is. How can you even stand to be around us?"

Gabriel rolled to his feet and clutched Ruby's chin in his hand. "You are beautiful. Listen to me, okay? Your soul is beautiful. You're courageous and strong. You believe in yourself and you believe in doing the right thing, and trust me when I say that you've made better choices than I ever have."

Ruby nodded shakily.

"If you just want to think of me as that quirky magician from the Enchanted Forest, then go ahead. Or as the sweetshop owner—I don't care. Or, if you want, you can think of me as an archangel, but remember that archangels aren't as nice as you think they are." He scowled darkly. "Lucifer's an archangel."

"Okay. Okay," Ruby breathed, visibly drawing herself back under control and setting Gabriel's drink down. "Thanks."

"You've always known me, Red. I've never hidden who I am. Now you just understand it better. That's all. Trust me, if I was going to start playing Trickster again—"

"Which you're not, because if you do we'll have to shove another wooden stake through your chest," Dean interrupted, smiling charmingly.

"Right. If I did, I'd have the Winchesters, and probably Castiel, on my ass, and I'd rather not do that again. But there might be some people that I'd visit retribution on in this town, were I interested in getting back on that track. Believe me, Red, you would not be one of them."

"What do you mean, retribution?"

"I said that he was a pagan god, right?" Dean asked, still leaning into over the table and into Ruby's space. "He's a trickster. That's what tricksters do—they use very nasty and out-of-proportion pranks to punish people who do bad things. There's usually some element of irony to it."

"Just desserts," Gabriel added happily. "I'm the archangel of justice, of judgement. It's only natural."

"There is nothing natural about killing an abusive bastard with a cartoon Hulk," Sam said flatly. "Or kidnapping a bigoted kid with a UFO and probing him and making him slow dance with aliens. Or arranging for a guy who tested cosmetics on animals to be eaten by a crocodile in the sewers."

"Hey, I liked the slow dancing aliens," Dean said, snorting. "I may not like you, Gabriel, but I'll admit that you've got style."

"Aw," Gabriel pouted outrageously. "You don't like me, whatever will I do?" He leaned forward to look into Dean's eyes. "It's funny, really. You remind me so much of Michael sometimes, but other times… Michael never approved of anything that I did. He didn't even find my antics reluctantly amusing. But then you, Dean Winchester, have proven yourself to be so much better than Michael in so many ways."

"Who's Michael?" Henry piped up, obviously tired of being ignored. Emma had read the books, of course, and she knew exactly who Michael was. But still, it would be interesting to hear how Gabriel described him, after everything that had happened.

"My brother," Gabriel said shortly. "Him and Dean-o here have a special bond."

Sam and Emma snorted at the same time, and Dean made a protesting scoffing noise. "I never said 'yes' to him!" Dean said loudly.

"You were going to," Gabriel stated matter-of-factly. "You would have, to save Adam, except that you didn't have the opportunity. There's a reason that you and Michael are so much alike, Dean. And Sam and Lucifer. And that won't ever go away, even if my brothers are locked in hell forever."

"Shut up." Dean threw himself against the back of the booth to sulk.

"So, what are you guys hunting?"

Dean gestured at the papers, folders and newspapers. "This town appeared out of thin air. Now, obviously, that was because of this curse thing that nobody's told me much about, but whatever was protecting it from outsiders is completely gone."

"It looks that way," Emma added. "Except that nobody who was under the original curse can leave this town without losing their memories of who they are, and permanently reverting back to their cursed persona. Henry and I can obviously leave. I'm not too sure about August, but he can probably leave as well. Regina—well, maybe, but I'm sure she's not too eager to test that theory out. You can leave, but that's because you're an archangel. You're more powerful than the curse, you always have been. Even Gold can't, and he's the one who created it."

"Gold did more than create the curse, sweetheart. He wrote your immunity into its fabric."

"I know," Emma said. "And he remembered who he was, under the curse, so he made himself at least partly immune as well, but it doesn't extend to this. Or at least he doesn't think that it does, and if he doesn't want to take the risk, then who am I to tell him that he should? Oh, that reminds me," she cut herself off and turned to her son.

If Neal was Rumplestiltskin's son and Gold was determined to locate him, chances were that she'd see him again. Henry would find out that Neal was his father, and furthermore, that that cock and bull story about a dead firefighter that she'd fed him was exactly that—cock and bull.

She didn't want to do this. She didn't want to see Neal again. She'd loved him, and he'd betrayed her in the worst possible way, left her alone in the dark and with nobody. She'd never quite stopped loving him, if she was honest with herself. But she didn't have the energy to love him in person again.

Still, it was past time that Henry knew who his father was, and it was past time that she told him the truth about the whole sordid story. Henry deserved to know, even if she didn't want to tell him.

"Henry, I need to tell you something, okay? And you're probably going to be mad at me for it. You have every right to be, but I just ask that you hear me out until the end."

"Okay?" Henry looked rightfully wary.

"When you asked about your father," Emma started, looking up. "I told you that a lot of things. That he was dead, that he was a hero, that I would have married him. The last one is true. The rest were lies."

Henry looked crushed. "Um, Em—" Dean started.

"Shut up, Dean," Emma interrupted without looking away from her son. "I didn't want to talk about him because he hurt me. He hurt me a lot. He wasn't a good man, but I loved him and he betrayed me. I didn't think that I was ever going to see him again, so I didn't think that I needed to open that wound again."

"You lied to me!" Henry gasped.

"Yes," Emma said. "I did. At the time I told myself that it was to protect you from the truth, but that was a lie as well. It was to protect me, and I should have been honest with you."

"You're no better than her," Henry accused.

"I'm going to kill him," Dean said mildly. "When I get my hands around that little asshole's throat, he is going to die for breaking my sister's heart."

Henry stopped, turned to stare at Emma in surprise. "He hurt you?"

"Yeah, kid. He hurt me a lot."

"Then why are you telling me now? You weren't ever going to tell me, were you?"

"No. I wasn't. I wasn't going to ever open that up again. But I'm telling you because we've made a discovery about your father, something that I didn't know about him before. Something that makes it unlikely that I'll be able to avoid seeing him again, and you should be able to meet your father when you do see him."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, in this world," Emma began. "Your father's name is Neal Cassidy. He never gave me any reason to doubt that, though I'll admit that I couldn't have been sure that it was his real name. However, he wasn't born in this world. And the name that he was born with was Baelfire."

She could see in Henry's eyes the minute the connection clicked in his mind. Of course Rumplestiltskin's story was in his book. "He's Mr. Gold's son."

"Yes. We believe so." She glanced at Gabriel, the herald of this absolutely ridiculous discovery, for confirmation. Gabriel just nodded, smirking. "We have been reliably informed that Baelfire and Neal Cassidy are the same person, so Mr. Gold is now looking for a man named Neal Cassidy, with a nasty criminal record and no real childhood, using his considerable resources."

"A criminal record?" Henry demanded.

"When I met Neal, he was a thief. So was I—that was why I was in jail when I gave birth to you. He had stolen some watches from a jewelry store, and was wanted for them. It was going to make it impossible for us to settle down, and because they knew who he was, he wasn't able to approach the storage locker that he had hidden them in. But I could. I knew that there was a risk to it, but it should have worked out. It would have, if he hadn't turned me in."

"He turned you in?" Henry demanded, riveted by the story.

"He called in an anonymous tip, and I was in jail. Alone, and pregnant and eighteen years old. I had no way of contacting my family," she gestured at her brothers across the table.

"I would have come, Emma. If I'd known, you have to know that I would have come," Dean said, eyes painfully earnest. "And Dad would have too."

"I know," Emma said fervently, showing him her gratitude with her eyes alone. "I know that you would've been there. You would have done anything, Dean." It had been so long since she'd been able to trust someone enough to rely on them, but she absolutely trusted Dean. If he'd known about her being in jail, he would've been there in a heartbeat, and he would have gotten her out. Whatever it took.

"I'm sorry he hurt you," Henry said childishly. His tone made it clear that he'd never considered the idea that his father may not have been a good man, that Emma may have been hurt by him, instead of just grieving over his metaphorical death. "But I'm still mad that you lied."

"I know," Emma said. "And you should be, because I shouldn't have. But please try to understand why I did it. Now, in his defence, he did not know that I was pregnant. I never got a chance to tell him, because he was long gone by the time that I noticed the signs and figured it out."

"He still shouldn't have done that to you! Doesn't he know that true love's kiss is the most powerful force in the world?"

Emma, Dean, Sam and Gabriel all snorted loudly at the idea that any of their problems could possibly be fixed by something as trivial as true love.

"Not in this world, Henry," Gabriel said seriously, sounding heavily weighed down. "See, if love is that powerful, then angels should be capable of so much more, shouldn't we? Instead Michael tried to start the apocalypse and Raphael tried to end the world and Lucifer… well maybe, Lucifer is the only one of us who loved like he was supposed to."

"What are you talking about?" Henry demanded.

Gabriel sighed. "There's a reason that I'm not in your little book, kid."

"Why?" Henry demanded, eyeing him eagerly.

"I am the archangel Gabriel. The holy messenger, the angel of justice, and my Father's judgement." The statement would have been intimidating, except that Gabriel's tone was somewhere between bored and embarrassed.

Then there was a cracking sound, all the lights went out except for some eerie backlighting on Gabriel's form, and some seriously long shadows of wings reflected on the bar behind him.

Then the lights came back on, and everyone in Granny's was staring in shock, except for Henry, who just looked excited. "That is totally wicked! I knew that you had to be badass! I just knew it."

"Henry, I own a sweetshop," Gabriel observed flatly. "What makes you think that I'm a badass? I'm really not. I'm a scared little kid who ran away from home the second it got hard. I hid behind my powers for millennia, punishing humans for their wrongs. I am the epitome of cowardice." Gabriel paused for a moment, looking conflicted.

"You want badass, talk to the righteous man over here, or the guy who overpowered Satan. Talk to your mom, who finally figured out how to fulfil her destiny after going after a dragon with the most badly crafted sword that I have ever seen. Talk to Castiel, who rebelled against heaven for the right reasons, instead of being like me and Lucifer—who left for all the wrong ones. Talk to your grandparents, or hell, Regina. Talk to Belle about fighting for love and having the courage to love someone no matter who they are. Talk to all the ordinary humans who stood up to demons and angels and died for their trouble to stop the apocalypse, just because it was the right thing to do. I'm sure that your uncles aren't even slightly short of acquaintances that could be considered badass, if you want to meet some. All I ever did for this world was get an archangel blade through the chest."

"Feeling guilty, are we?" Dean asked. He surprisingly didn't sound smug at all.

"I could've tried, you know? I could've gone home, tried to talk some sense in Mike and Raph, at least. Lucifer was clearly beyond reason, but that didn't mean that Michael was. But no, I ran away until I couldn't any more, and in the end I fought him because you two morons had infected me with your goddamn caring."

"You're an archangel, Gabriel," Sam pointed out gently. "We didn't make you see or feel anything. All that we did is remind you of who you are."

"Yeah, thanks so much for that," Gabriel snapped, sarcasm absolutely dripping from his tone. "Exactly what I needed."

"Sorry," Dean said, not sounding very sorry.

Dean's phone interrupted them, blaring some Led Zeppelin song, and Dean pulled it out to answer it. He prodded his brother out of his way as he greeted whoever was on the other end, and slid out of the booth to walk away a little.

"So are you guys getting a room?" Emma asked Sam. "I'd ask you to come and stay with us, but we're kind of full. It's only a two-bedroom, and we've got David and Mary Margaret, since David let Kathryn have the house. Plus me and Henry. Henry's already camping in the living room."

"I don't mind," Henry piped up. "I like living with them."

"There have been some awkward moments," Emma elaborated. "Like, scarred for life moments."

"Do you have any idea how many times I've walked in on Dean?" Sam made a bitchy face. "Think about how many times you walked in on him, and then multiply it by one-thousand, because he's that much worse when Dad isn't around to police him. Preaching to the choir."

"Dean isn't your parent, Sam," Emma said dryly.

"Sometimes, I feel like he might as well be," Sam sighed heavily.

"Yeah, I know." And she did. John Winchester had been a good man. He'd been an honorable man who had loved his family very, very much. But the practical side of parenting was not his strong suit. Dean had always taken care of Sam's lunches at school, replacing his supplies and his clothes and shoes, making sure there was edible food in the house. He'd taken Emma under that same wing wordlessly, and there had never been anyone, even Neal, who had so effortlessly made her feel taken-care of. Dean Winchester was a nurturer, plain and simple. He needed to be needed.

"Hey, so how are those people your parents? They can't be any older than any of us?"

"Curse," Gabriel answered, before Emma had to. "Basically, the curse was designed to freeze everyone in time, in a place where all of their happy endings were taken away and they all answered to Regina. Your sister was the prophesized saviour. It was written that on her twenty-eighth birthday, she would come back and save us all, so they smuggled her out of the Enchanted Forest in a magic wardrobe before the curse hit. She then grew up and aged in the real world, while they were frozen in a suspended loop here."

Sam grimaced. "It was written that Dean and I would play along and let your brothers ride us to the apocalypse. Does it look like the world ended?"

"Touché, Sammy. Touché," Gabriel said. "But if my sources are right, you had to jump your ass straight into the pit to stop it from happening."

Sam and Emma both winced, and Gabriel shook his head like he was trying to shake water out of his ear. "Sorry, sorry," he added. "I'm new at this empathy thing, but I've been a human guy with a sweetshop for twenty-eight years. Leaves a mark on a person, which, I figure was Dad's point in the first place."

"What, He was trying to teach you empathy?" Sam asked.

"I've been kind of without it for years. And this way, He times it exactly right so that Mike and Luce are trapped for the foreseeable future, Raph is gone and Castiel has figured out that, good angel that he is, he is not meant to lead heaven. I get back from my punishment and toss Naomi off her bitchy little high horse, and start running the show and fixing everything up after what happened with Mike and Luce and Raph to begin with."

"Seriously?" Sam demanded.

"Just a theory. But Dad always did kind of want us to figure shit out for ourselves." Emma considered protesting the cursing, but Henry was hearing it anyway.

"But what about Cas? If he was just… I don't know, collateral damage, then why does God keep bringing him back?"

"Castiel's not collateral damage," Gabriel sounded… amused, almost, at the thought. "He's just not 'Sheriff of Heaven' material. Daddy's got other plans for him."

"Like what?" Sam demanded implacably, arms crossed over his chest.

"Well, just a theory, like I said, but I think that Dad's trying to create a new breed of angel, and I think that Cassie's his test subject."

"What does that mean?" Sam wanted to know, a hysterical note in his tone.

"Relax, Sasquatch, I don't think it's bad. I don't know if you've noticed, but angels are kind of useless. They don't love humans or earth or each other like they're supposed to, they don't really care about following Him anymore. They can't think for themselves, and if they do you get disasters like Lucifer and I."

"And Cas," Sam pointed out.

"Sammy, you may have noticed that Castiel's feelings for your brother are somewhat… atypical."

Sam snorted.

"And he's been doomed since the second that he touched that gorgeous, glowingly righteous soul in hell. The second that his Grace brushed against it, Castiel was a goner. Why? It wouldn't have happened if Father hadn't allowed it. But Castiel fell in love with a human, and that's never happened before. I mean, I love humans. I do. People, all of their messy love and hate and courage and choices. I've never been in love with one, though."

"What about Anna?"

"Anna Milton may have been in love with your brother, or had the potential to be," Gabriel said. "But Anael? She lost the capacity to love him that way as soon as she got her Grace back."

"Okay, so Cas loves Dean. But what does that have to do with a new breed of angel?"

"Love is what gives us the capacity for free will," Gabriel said. "When we break free of the mould of that cold, distant love that we feel for Him, and that we were always taught to feel for humans, it gives us free will. Lucifer loved Father, not like he was supposed to, but like a living, burning thing. I loved Mike and Luce and Raph too much to stay, so that gave me the strength to run. Then I started loving humans, and that gave me the strength to stay gone. Castiel, he is in love with your brother, and he loves you—so he started to fall. And, despite everything being taken away from him, he stood by your side anyway."

"So even though he makes mistakes, God keeps bringing him back," Sam prodded.

"He's a guinea pig," Gabriel filled in. "Father is trying to fix the problems with us—the fact that angels are so dependent on Him that they might as well be extra limbs, or they rebel and try to destroy the earth. There is no in between. Dad wants them to think for themselves without going psycho, and Castiel's his test subject. Dad knew that baby-bro would never try to destroy humanity because he loves Dean so much, but that he'd never blindly follow heaven again for the same reasons."

"He's trying to cut the apron strings," Emma finally realized, somewhat shocked by the fact that they were sitting here having a conversation about God—not as a distant theological concept, but as a father who was trying to raise his children right.

"Exactly," Gabriel answered. "Like I said, though, it's just a theory."

"No, I think you're right," Sam said distantly. "That makes a lot more sense than anything Dean and I have come up with. Not that Dean will take well to you saying that Cas is in love with him, because you know that makes him collapse into a fit of commitment-phobic, low self-esteem driven panic."

Here's chapter 3 done. I still haven't gotten into actual plot, but in the meantime, I hope you enjoy my plotless drivel. I'm going to have to re-watch those episodes that I want to do, and I'm procrastinating that. The real story should start next chapter. Honest. I didn't mean for Gabriel to be in this scene, but suddenly he was there, and the thing was fourteen pages long, so I just decided to publish it. The inspiration for Gabriel's theory comes from a fascinating meta that I read on AO3 a few months ago. I have searched, but been unable to find it again. If you know what I'm talking about, I would really appreciate a link so that I can post it here.