"If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same."

-T.S. Eliot

Gabriel groaned from a place deeper than sleep. A memory half-forgotten, dancing from the depths of a nightmare, evaporated away as he blinked awake.

"Dad? Dad!"

The last cloudy remnants of the too-real dream faded. He rubbed at his eyes, his vision just clear enough he could see motes of dust floating in the predawn light of his bedroom. And there stood his little girl, hovering anxiously at the door.

Damn. Second time he'd woken her up in the space of a week with his nightmares.

"Sorry, Sati," he drawled, dragging a sluggish hand over his face. "Sorry I woke you."

"Were you dreaming of Purgatory again?" she asked, dark hair framing her face.

"No," he lied.

She waited, her small fingers hooked on the doorframe. "Uncle Cas said something about demons yesterday."

He loved his brother, but the idiot sometimes had no clue what and what not to say in the presence of a seven-year-old.

"That's only because Uncle Cas used to hunt demons," Gabriel answered, unable to keep the irritation from his voice. "When we still had them."

Still she lingered, and Gabriel watched, waiting for her to leave. "Sati. Go back to bed. It's too early."

She just stared, her tired eyes catching the faint light.

"You're okay?"

A sleepy rumble of laughter fell from his lips. His daughter; his protector. If only he could protect her from the world.

" 'm okay," he answered.

Seemingly satisfied, she nodded and retreated. Gabriel listened to the creaking of the wood under her feet, mentally tracing her footsteps back to her bedroom at the end of the hall.

He considered going back to bed, but his mind seemed just this side of too awake. He didn't have a great chance of getting back to sleep. So with a groan, he rolled to his feet, stretching out stiff limbs and yawning. The ever-present, acrid sting of dust in his chest made him wince, but he'd long become used to it. He didn't know anyone who couldn't take a little dust.

Well, not anymore, at least.

He padded over to the window, the wood creaky and cold beneath his bare feet. The world outside remained shadowed in darkness, but the barest hints of the approaching morning lit the horizon with a blue haze. The wind stirred the crops around, whipping about with force. He frowned, thinking it an early hour for such gusty weather, and wondered what sort of storm they could expect. God, anything but another blackout. Well, maybe not a tornado, but generally, he'd prefer neither.

If only it would rain. Drip all the dust out of the sky, and give them clean, fresh air to breathe for a few hours.

As he stared out the window, wondering what sort of mess lurked in the wind, he sighed. What he wouldn't give for some coffee, especially on a morning like this. Coffee would chase away both the lousy memories and the fog of sleep. He'd pour lots of sugar and cream in his cup. Oh, sure, sugarcane had long died out, but he could sweeten it up with corn sugar just fine. Too bad coffee was long gone, too.

He heard no sign of noise through the wall to his left, where Cas' bedroom sat. What a unusual day for Gabriel to beat his brother getting up.

His feet protested the cold floor again, sending sharp, aching stabs through his skin. It reminded him of a conversation with Cas about the old wool comforters in the attic.

"I can unravel them for their wool," Cas had offered. "I want to make Sati an overcoat, and socks for the rest of us."

Gabriel shuddered to think of the potentially moth-eaten stacks of blankets packed in the attic. He'd tried cooking up some naphthalene for mothballs in his lab a few years back, because the damn moths kept eating up all their old wool (and as with so many things, they wouldn't get any more, either—all the world's sheep slept with the dinosaurs, now). But he'd had his misgivings. Naphthalene, besides smelling awful, had a tendency to catch fire, and he'd nearly had a mini-explosion in his lab. And throwing the stuff to the mercy of the dry, staticky dust in the attic storeroom seemed ripe for starting a fire. The old farmhouse would go up faster than kindling.

He'd briefly considered making dichlorobenzene instead—it would have smelled awful, too, but a stray spark of static electricity wouldn't have lit up the house in a fire. But it proved even more of a bitch to make, which would have held true even if he'd had access to, like... a real lab. Not the converted basement of a hundred-year-old farmhouse he called a lab. And also, he would have never allowed the dangerous ingredients anywhere in Sati's general vicinity.

Never mind that Cas sorta expected him to blow stuff up occasionally.

In the end, he'd given up and wrapped the wool in old plastic wrap, hoping to keep the moths away. He hadn't opened the box in years, so who knew if it had worked.

Gabriel missed Google nowadays. The Internet had been an amazing thing back when he'd been younger. Thirty years ago, some kid would have perfected a way to make all sorts of useful chemicals in their parents' basement. Sure, he'd have attracted the attention of the FBI in the process, but still. Now, Gabriel mostly had to rely on his patchy memory to tell him how to do stuff. And also he relied on memory for the stuff not to do—like the one explosion which almost landed him in a faraway clinic, when he'd made a dumb mistake and added water to an acid.

He had boxes of books in the attic, though, and he guarded those jealously. Textbooks, technical manuals, and a ton of things he'd picked up in an abandoned library with Kali a few years back. They'd packed them up in the best boxes, and padded the empty margins to keep out as much dust as possible. He would have preferred to keep them in the basement, but it leaked sometimes when it rained, and he couldn't afford to ruin those books. The attic got too hot in the summer, but he'd rather have heat-crinkled pages than no pages at all.

He stretched again, tugging at the heavy, wooden door to his closet. A thick pair of work boots, jeans, and a faded, flannel top, all to protect his skin while working in the field. Time to get dressed.

By the time Cas came downstairs, Gabriel had long since started a fire in the woodstove, and set a kettle on the burner. It probably had lost some of its heat, but he'd already busied himself with a broken welding torch, and couldn't bother to check. The rugged, oak table made the best surface in the house for doing work, after all.

Cas gave him a disapproving glare, and set to work making breakfast. Little Bro always hated it when he played engineer at the kitchen table.

"Any luck?" Cas asked, dispassionate.

Gabriel made a face, not bothering to glance up. "This torch is busted. I need another one."

He set it on the table and massaged his temples, a rush of frustration blooming across his skin. 'Need another one' usually meant 'make another one,' and this one had been hard enough to cobble together in the first place.

Cas quirked an eyebrow. "Then if you are done, might I suggest you clear the table before I begin setting out breakfast."

Gabriel snorted, and thought about making some sort of a comment. Sati wouldn't mind the mess. She'd perk right up, ask how the torch worked, and pester him to let her help. But Cas' tone brooked no argument, so he gathered his crap together and carted it down to the basement. Stored away for another evening, on some day not spent farming.

Vibrant, petite footsteps thumped across the floor above, and Gabriel grinned. He wondered if every seven-year-old danced around so cheerful and bright in the early mornings.

"Don't run down the steps!" he called up the stairway from his basement lab. It didn't matter, because she'd beaten him to it, dark eyes staring down at him triumphant from the kitchen.

"You'll trip and hurt yourself," Cas chided gently.

"Dad says I'm good on my feet," she chirped as Gabriel ascended the staircase.

"Not that good, munchkin," he replied, gliding past her, ruffling her thick hair before reaching for his jacket.

Sati's positively glowed with her resulting smile, lighting up their tired little farmhouse. She resembled her mother far more than Gabriel, with her brown skin and dark, expressive eyes. Kali had loved Sati's hair, black as the deepest night, even as a baby. She'd always wondered if it'd lighten as she grew, but at seven years old, it remained as lovely as it always had.

Gabriel just wished Kali could see it.

"I need to go to town," Cas told him, turning to Sati's place on the table. Her bowl, flipped upside down, had collected a fine layer of dust on its underside. Regardless, Cas cleared his throat, and she flipped it over, eager for breakfast. The basin remained clear of the pervasive dust, so Cas scooped in steaming heaps of corn grits.

Gabriel wrinkled his nose. The same food for breakfast every single morning got old. He peeked at his watch. "Gotta leave to take Sati to school in, oh, twenty minutes?"

"Ten."

"Ten," he repeated, grim. Well, he certainly didn't have time to do much. "All right. Ten minutes. I'll get the truck ready. Don't forget to leave the solar collectors on."

"The fourth panel is broken," Cas reminded him, and Gabriel had to bite on his tongue to not curse. Children in the house and all. "You need another transistor."

Wonderful. He'd need to make a trip to a junkyard somewhere, or maybe the old dump down two counties over. No one could find silicon easily these days, but if he could get his hands on some old electronics, he could build his own replacement parts. Maybe.

He knew he needed to give all the solar batteries a thorough check, to ensure they still stored and discharged power correctly. But it would take hours, maybe days, and as soon as they got back, they had work on the farm to do.

"I can check them," Sati piped up. "I've been reading your book on materials science. I can do it."

Gabriel wanted to high-five his daughter for being so ambitious (even if she couldn't possibly know how to pull it off). A second later, he realized she'd gone digging through the books in the attic again, and sighed. It was bad enough she liked to play in the spare bedroom (or what passed as one) in the attic, much less rifle through the things in the storeroom next to it.

"Sati," he said, "please take care of my books. We're can't get more of those."

"Don't worry," she answered, swallowing around a spoonful of grits. " 'm careful with your stuff."

He couldn't help but smile. He'd taught her all his rotten habits. Cas would have a fit about her talking with her mouth full at any moment.

Gabriel winked at her, and made his way to the screen door. It squeaked as he pushed it open.

"You're not going to eat?" Cas asked, his voice chasing him.

"Not hungry," he tossed over his shoulder, but the wind probably swallowed the noise.

The sky had a gray-brown haze all the way out to the horizon. He remembered days spent as a child, staring up at the sky when it had once been blue—and he could never forget the deep blue he'd seen high in the sky when he'd been a pilot. Down here, it never looked so vibrant. Not anymore, at least.

Just a big, dirty, empty sky. Nothing to do but wake up in the morning, work, and go back to sleep.

His lab projects kept him sane, but Gabriel had no illusions as to his usefulness. He made a lot of gadgets for use around the house, and had practically welded together the solar energy system all by himself. But he knew his sort of restless spirit would have been happy being born a few decades earlier, or maybe, if the world didn't end first, a few decades later.

But things were what they were, and so he spent most of his spare time studying the blight. He scoured books on microbiology and horticulture and all the sciences he neglected when he'd been in college. Sure, he'd taken biology, but the intro courses only taught so much. Gabriel had become a different kind of scientist, and though his skills provided a lot of utility for his family, he really, really wished he'd known how much he'd need an intimate understanding of organic chemistry in his future. Not to mention botany and all the things farmers studied now.

Because that's all anyone did anymore: grow things. Farmers from here to there, from the former United States to the former Ukraine. Farmers everywhere, trying to grow just enough corn so the few people left didn't starve.

Because corn was all they had left.

"I'm going to check the condition of those blankets today," Cas' voice called from the passenger's side of the truck, conversational for a change. A quick glance showed him penning something in a tiny notebook. "I can wash them and hang the wool yarn to dry, then wrap it. If we're fortunate, the old cotton blanket I crocheted all those years ago will be intact, too."

Cotton. Another plant sleeping with the dinosaurs. The bitter thought had him grinding his teeth. Synthetic fibers made up most of their clothes, now. Soft things like wool and cotton had become luxuries.

His attention drifted back to the weather. If these clouds kept it up, the wind would blow more things to pieces today. At this point, he didn't like the idea of dropping Sati off at school. What if another blackout rolled through and he couldn't get back to her?

"You're gonna hang wet yarn to clean it up?" he replied, trying to push the strange weather from his mind. "Are you crazy? It'll be a magnet for more dust."

"I'll hang it in the closet, Gabriel."

"Right. Because our clothes are so fresh and clean and free of dust."

Cas huffed, and Sati just giggled next to him.

The cabin fell silent, and Gabriel sighed as his hand rested on the steering wheel. "Well, I could use a pair of socks, if you don't mind. Even though it's summer, the mornings aren't kind on the feet."

"I'll have them knitted up in a few days, if all goes well," Cas answered, writing something else in his notebook. A quick glance revealed a faint quirk of his lips.

"Why don't you get the stuff in the store?" Sati asked, sandwiched between them in the front seat..

"Acrylic is too expensive anymore," Cas said. "Besides, cotton and wool make better things, Sati."

"Those itchy blue gloves you won't wear are made from the store-bought yarn, Sati," Gabriel added, lips curving into a frown as he stared at the dirt road ahead.

"Ew," she answered. "Those itch a lot."

Gabriel saw Cas shrug from the edge of his vision. "Acrylic is mothproof. They ate holes in all our winter things the year before."

"Is that when Dad blew up the lab? That was scary."

Gabriel barked in laughter, nearly swerving into the long, endless rows of corn growing everywhere but the tiny dirt road.

"That was the season, yes," Cas answered, and Gabriel could feel the side-eye from his little brother without even looking.

"Cas knows his yarn. That's why I let him make everything." He shrugged. "Your scarf was great last year, right?"

"You don't think the moths ate it?" she asked, her voice aghast. Far too aghast for a seven-year-old.

"I am going to determine that today," Cas replied.

Gabriel's frown deepened, his eyes trailing up to a dark cloud above. It swirled, reminiscent of a harmless dust devil. It didn't alarm him, but it seemed odd in such cool, moist weather. Damn peculiar, because the dust seemed to gather and fall instead of swirl and rise. Well, it'd need hot air at the surface to rise, but... weird.

"Yeah, after we finish refitting the broken combine," Gabriel said, but his attention remained split between the road the the sky. He leaned forward to peer up at the strange cloud as he neared it. It seemed to hover just over the roadway, of course.

Cas took notice of him, and followed his eyes. "Huh. Strange weather."

"Damn strange," Gabriel grunted, leaning back in his seat.

Dread settled, stone-heavy and cold, in his gut. Bad winds. Strange clouds. He didn't like the looks of things. He certainly didn't want to drive under the offending column of dust, and considered how much corn they'd lose if he briefly went off road into the cornfield. Not too much, and generally, he just didn't think it worth it to chance things.

"Is it a dust devil?," Sati asked as Gabriel diverted the truck offroad.

"Don't know," he answered, and paused to reconsider. "Probably."

"We've never driven around dust devils before."

Because I've never seen this sort of weather before, he thought, but refused to say. Scaring his kid had no place on the agenda this morning.

"Eh, just being careful. We've got the spare tire on, after all, and I haven't picked up another yet."

He diverted back onto the road, giving the odd cloud one more glance in his rear view mirror. What on earth could create such a thing? He'd never studied meteorology, but hell, he had more than a basic understanding of how these things happened. Pilots had to know something about the weather, because what if you flew straight into a thunderstorm? You needed to know how not to crash. And while he knew falling columns of cold air happened, they were freak events. And powerful. But this? Brand new to him.

And worrying, because the human race couldn't take too many more hits. New weather patterns could spell disaster.

As he crested the hill, marking about half of the acreage of their massive farm, Gabriel slowed down to a crawl. He noted three more clouds off in the distance, all resembling the one they'd just avoided. They floated, deceptively peaceful, far away over the rows of corn, with dust—and water—falling from their tall columns.

"That's different," he heard Cas mutter, leaning forward to stare.

Gabriel brought the truck to a complete stop, worry furrowing his brow.

"Yeeep," he hummed after a long moment. "You're not going to school today, Sati."

"But Dad—!"

"No buts," he cut her off, and began a three-point turn on the dirt road. "Sorry Cas, but we'll have to get your stuff tomorrow."

"Agreed," he said, and his voice had a solemn tone. "Have you seen anything like this before, Gabriel?"

He shook his head, and whipped the truck around, heading back towards the farmhouse. "Never."

"Is it bad?" Despite the potential scariness of the situation, Sati didn't sound too alarmed. Just curious.

"Don't think so," Gabriel lied, again, because true or not, he didn't want to scare the crap out of her unnecessarily. "It's just a bit strange. It'll probably clear up soon."

But he shared a worried glance with Cas above her head, and the conversation in the cabin fell silent. Tense.

"Why aren't you guys talking?"

"We're just watching the clouds," Cas told her. "Don't worry."

She shifted in her place, squirming forward. Gabriel reached out with his hand and pushed her back against the seat. Not for the first time did he curse the fact the middle spot of the truck's front seat only had a lap belt. She could wriggle and squirm enough to crawl right out of it when she got excited, which never did good things for Gabriel's blood pressure.

"Stay still," he told her. "We'll be back home in—."

A deep, rumbling noise cut his voice short. At first, Gabriel thought someone had started launching missiles again, because he heard the unmistakable thunder of a sonic boom. He slammed on the brakes by reflex, freaked out by whatever he'd just heard..

Which, exactly two seconds later, turned out to be the right choice, because the source of the supersonic noise came barreling down in the road directly ahead.

Gabriel cursed as the brakes locked up, and gripped the steering wheel for dear life as the truck squirreled about on the dirt road. Sati screamed, and Cas made a shout, one of his arms shooting out to cover her.

By fate or fortune or sheer dumb luck, the truck slid to a stop feet short of whatever had crashed. A plume of dust rose around them from the truck's sudden stop, while the impact crater smouldered ahead in the middle of the only road off his farm. Fuck.

Gabriel panted in the aftermath of the scare, white-knuckling the steering wheel as he stared over at Cas. His brother had Sati wrapped up in his arms, his eyes wide and lips parted.

"Okaaaay," Gabriel breathed, locking the parking brake in place. Adrenaline rushed through his veins, his skin creeping with the anxiety of it. "We're okay. We're... okay."

Except an impact crater sat only a few feet ahead of them, which did not fit the definition of okay. What the hell?

"Cas," he breathed, popping the latch on his seatbelt. "Stay here with Sati."

"Wait!" she shouted, clinging to his elbow, wrapping small arms tight around his own. She glanced between him and the smoking crater outside. "I wanna see it too!"

"No," Gabriel huffed, his voice full and stern, and she made a face, retreating into Cas' arms.

"Uncle Cas...!"

"Stay here with me, Sati," he reaffirmed, hugging her tighter.

Gabriel pushed open the door, his daughter's protests ringing in his ears. As he inched closer to the impact crater, another loud, whistling noise caught his ear. Not supersonic, not this time, but getting louder, and he had the good fortune to look up just in time to see something flying towards where he stood.

He leapt out of the way with hardly a fraction of a second to spare, and to his horror, heard Sati screaming in the truck behind him.

The sound of his daughter in distress had him jumping to action, and he rolled to his feet ready to fight. But her scream had been one of alarm—bits of the second thing which had crashed had sloughed off onto the ground already, something fiery and ashen leaving trails on the hood of his truck.

"You guys all right?!" he shouted.

"We're fine," Cas called back. "Do you need me to—."

"No," he hissed, and waved him off. "Stay in there with her!"

The second object sat in a fiery, crumbled pile in front of his truck. It had made its own miniature impact crater, but for the most part, it seemed to have burned up before it hit the ground. Jesus. How fast had it been going?

At least it seemed soft. He wouldn't want to repair the truck out here. He approached the smouldering crater, and thought at first thought it nothing but heaps of ash. Upon closer inspection, he realized the air danced not with ash, but down. Singed, blackened down.

What the…?. Feathers? From a wing, maybe?

His heart leapt to his throat, and he jogged over to the edge of the larger impact crater where the first object had struck. And when he peered inside, he did not see a rock or a hunk of metal, but a soot-covered, trembling body. With one wing.

Jesus Christ. It was an angel.

For a second, Gabriel thought about covering over the hole as fast as possible with the trembling form still inside, and pretending they had never found it. It had been... god... ten years since he'd even heard of angels walking around on Earth? Even longer since most had vanished, claiming humanity had disappointed them so much they didn't have the energy or will to finish the apocalypse they'd started.

Gabriel did not like angels. He'd been fortunate enough to avoid the fate of possession, but his little bro hadn't been so lucky. Cas had an archangel along for the ride, once upon a time, and it had been one of the most awful things he'd ever lived to tell about. And that included all the many times he almost died in his career as a hunter.

Angels had ruined the world. They kicked off their apocalypse but didn't stick around to clean up the mess. Instead of Paradise, the survivors of humanity got stuck with monsters and a deluge of curses. Then some brave soul sealed both Purgatory and Hell shut, and a turncoat angel had supplied them with a spell limiting the power of Grace, which brought about a huge slowdown in the end of the world. The angels packed up and claimed they were leaving the universe behind, and slammed Heaven's doors behind them.

So what was an angel even doing here? What idiot would ever say 'yes' again?

But as much contempt as he felt for it, a part of him couldn't ignore its agony. Maybe this had been one of the decent ones. Not that it mattered much, really. The angels wouldn't have much power anymore, not on Earth.

Much.

Well, fuck. What now?

He marched back to the truck, hopped in, and slammed the door shut.

"What is it?" Cas asked, upright and alert. Good. They needed him in hunter mode right now.

"You are not going to believe this." And he leaned over, clasping his hands over Sati's ears. "It's an angel."

Cas blinked, and his expression hardened. "Alive?"

Sati squirmed under his hands, and Gabriel didn't have any illusions about actually blocking her ears. "Yep. That pile of ash in front of the truck? It's a wing."

Cas considered it. "Is the other wing still attached?"

"As far as I can tell."

Cas peered towards the bed of the truck. "Do we still have the cables?"

"No, I took them out yesterday to... fuck, it doesn't matter. What do we do, Cas? Should we just leave it?"

Sati successfully squirmed out from under his hands, and huffed at him. "We have to help it, Dad."

"Angels aren't good like the ones in your Christmas stories, Sati," he told her.

"But they're not all bad, either!" she argued. "What about the famous ones? There's Raphael who worked with us to try and figure out the blight..."

"And he died."

"And there was Hannah who helped with—."

"Sati..."

"Dad! You're always telling me how people have to be better if we're going to survive. And it's wrong to leave someone behind who needs help."

Gabriel groaned, and pressed his face into his palm. She'd never let him live this down, and maybe worse, Sati had a point. He glanced up to met Cas' eyes, quirking an eyebrow.

"We can't take it to the doctor's clinic," he said. "Not if we want it to live. The town would lynch an angel."

Gabriel shook his head. Is that what they wanted? For the angel to actually live?

If Sati hadn't been along, he'd probably march out there with Cas and kill it. The world didn't need any more angels. But he stared down at his daughter, who gazed at him with all the fury and might a seven-year-old could muster.

Fuck. Okay. Kill it later, maybe. But not in front of her.

"Do we still have the angel blade in the attic?"

Cas gave him a single nod.

"The... uh..." He didn't want to say 'handcuffs with Enochian sigils' in front of his daughter, but didn't know a better way to put it. "The binds?"

Cas nodded. "Leather and iron, if we need it."

Jesus. They almost melted those down for the metal a year ago. Thank fuck they hadn't.

Well, at least if featherface turned out dangerous, they'd have it fully restrained. And Gabriel would send Sati out with Cas and take care of the 'problem'.

"Sati," he said, his voice stern, "you stay in this truck. Do you hear me? Cas and I are gonna get the angel. You leave this truck, you're grounded for a month."

"But I—."

"No buts! Angels are dangerous. Don't ever underestimate one!"

She shrank away, and Gabriel realized he'd been yelling. "Sorry, Sati, sorry. I didn't mean to shout. They just... well, they've done bad things. I just want you to steer clear until we know more."

She stared back, her voice soft. "This one might not be scary."

He exhaled, and ruffled her hair. "Maybe not. Stay here."

When he hopped out of the truck, this time he shut the door behind him, and heard Cas do the same. A glance over his shoulder showed Sati, still in the truck, but crowded up against the windshield. Well, at least she listened.

The crater ahead had mostly stopped smoking, so while visibility had improved, maneuvering their way down the soft dirt proved difficult. The crater hadn't made too deep of a hole, but the shape of it seemed strange and awkward. With any luck, the next dust storm would half cover it, and the next blackout would bury it.

The angel—Gabriel couldn't quite figure out its vessel's gender, but judging by sheer size, probably male—laid trembling in the pit, shifting about. It's skin had been blackened by soot, but Gabriel figured it had few if any burns underneath. Angels were resilient creatures. He—yes, it was a he—laid there panting, an arm curled up at a strange angle against his chest, a leg splayed behind him oddly, probably broken. His other wing smoked, as though it had been on fire.

Christ. Maybe resilience wasn't always a great thing. Death probably would have been easier for this guy.

He must have heard their footsteps, because his eyes fluttered open. As his weak gaze met Gabriel's hardened, stern face, unrestrained fear crept across his features. Good. If the angel feared them, perhaps he'd give them less trouble.

Gabriel knelt nearby—not at striking distance, because he knew the swords those angels carried—but near-ish.

"Looks like you had a bad landing," Gabriel commented. "Did hopping the angel express not occur to you, or did you want to fly like a bird?"

Cas gave him a pointed stare. "Don't antagonize him."

The angel's mouth moved, and it took a moment to understand him.

"Where am I?" Or, something kind of like it.

"Well, feathers, I'd say you're not in Kansas anymore, but that's exactly where you are, so."

The angel's head shifted, and blood oozed from his mouth and nose, mixing with the blackened soot and the dark dirt underneath.

"Are you going to kill me?" he rasped.

Gabriel shared a surprised glance with Cas.

"Sounds like you've met quite a welcoming committee before," Cas commented.

"I've had unpleasant times, yes." His vessel sounded mid or late twenties-ish, but the rasp made it harder to tell.

"Let me put it to you this way," Gabriel asked, his face not softening in the least. "Do we need to kill you?"

The angel stared back in open horror. "I mean you no harm. I swear it."

"Prove it. Hand over your blade," Gabriel told him.

The angel seemed torn, but apparently recognized he had few, if any, other options. Slowly, a long, silvery shimmer appeared in the dirt, underneath his arm. Agonizingly, he struggled to push it inch by inch in Gabriel's direction, soft noises of pain spilling from his lips.

If this were an act, it seemed damn convincing. Gabriel swooped down and palmed the blade, and tucked it into his belt. After a nod from Cas, the two flanked him.

"All right, let's get you up," Gabriel huffed, tugging at his arm. The angel didn't help, and he tugged harder. "Come on. We can't carry you."

Well, between him and Cas they probably could, but Gabriel had no desire to make things easy for an angel.

The angel struggled hard to put his feet under him, but couldn't get his left leg in the game at all. Gabriel wondered if the arm he grasped had also broken in the angel's crash landing. It felt uneven and wrong beneath the skin there. Never mind how the angel trembled every time he gripped it harder, hauling the big guy to the edge of the crater.

"Come on, up the hill," he huffed. "There you go."

The angel's eyelids drooped, and it seemed as though he couldn't even stay conscious. "Jesus, kiddo," Gabriel cursed, "what even happened to you?"

Gabriel had a case of morbid curiosity, really. What could mess up an angel so much? Oh, he'd probably be healed and all spry and dangerous within a few days, but still. It couldn't hurt to know for future reference, just in case more angels waltzed their way.

The angel mumbled something entirely unintelligible, and went limp in their arms.

Well, fuck.

While shouting at Sati to stay in the truck already, they half-dragged him to the bed of the truck, hoisting him up inside. But Gabriel couldn't very well leave him alone back there.

"You drive," Gabriel said. The sky had turned dark and hazy in the distance, as though great waves of earth soared on the horizon. "Looks like we have a dust storm on the way. Should cover up the crater in a few hours, but for now, just drive around it."

No one else came out this way, anyway. No one would accidentally flip their car in it.

"What are you going to do?" Cas asked, eyes confused.

Gabriel tapped the blade in his belt. "Hopefully, I'm gonna watch him. If he misbehaves, I'm gonna knife him."

Cas nodded, and moved to hop into the driver's seat. Hopefully, Gabriel wouldn't have to stab the angel with his daughter nearby, but no matter how traumatizing, it was better than the monster hurting her.

Sati, of course, pressed up against the fiberglass window at the rear of the cabin, trying her hardest to get a glimpse of their new passenger.

"Front seat," Gabriel called, knowing his voice would pierce the window. "Seatbelt. Now."

She sulked, but complied, and with great care, Cas drove off, moving to circle around the crater in the rows of corn. Meticulous enough to take out as few plants as possible.

They would just beat the dust storm back. Gabriel stared down at their passenger, and noted the angel remained entirely conked out. A dirt-stained, soggy rag lay underneath a tool, and it seemed good enough as any, so Gabriel grabbed it and wiped at soot and dirt on the angel's face.

Definitely young to median in age. Maybe thirty. Gabriel wondered what the poor bastard getting rode to death by the angel inside thought of all this.