Deans POV

"Don't worry, He'll get over himself," Balthazar said lightly.

I cleared my throat, re-adjusted my shirt and ran my hands self consciously down the front of it. I avoided Bella's eyes and looked straight at Balthazar. "You got it?" I asked, my voice sounding infuriatingly raw.

"That I do! Shall we vamoose," He gave me a sideways glance.

I look down at Daryl who was seated on a log, his head resting in his hands. This was a seething fucking mess. There was no way I'm going to keep this cluster-mug together by myself.

Meg sighed heavily and it turned into a husky groan, which damn it- took me to dark dirty places, "Dean, Dean, Dean... what did you do to Clarence this time?"

"None of your business!"

"You see it is my business, I'm mighty fond of the over-sized tree topper. I don't like to see him sad."

Bella flinched, her face paler than usual.

"Enough, we've got an Angel to find."

Meg opened her mouth to speak but I cut her assumptions off, "Not Cas... a different angel, Metatron."

"Holy smoking crap-cakes…"Meg mused with a half laugh looking between us with renewed interest.

Balthazar sidled up, I 'don't think that we need to bring everyone along on this little excursion, perhaps you, me and that brooding southern gentlemen over there who's trying desperately not to cry."

"Jes, he lost his brother and he just found out we are indirectly the cause of it, have some damn sympathy." Sam hissed angrily through his teeth.

I rub my forehead trying desperately to scrape away the tension resident there, just another exercise in futility.

"Not..my…problem, I had nothing to do with your little 'oppsie I did a doo-doo that destroyed the world . All I care about is restoring a blissfully hedonistic status quo, shall we go do that then?" Balthazar's mouth took on that infuriatingly smug tilt..

"As much as I hate to admit it, Asshat here is right, we can sit around sniping at each other and crying like girls." I cast a quick glance at Bella, "No offense." Her lips tightened in response."…Or we can get out there and get Metatron, and find a way to make it right."

"So, you fucked it all up again Dean O' boy, I should've known your families apocalyptic personality dysfunction was behind this shit storm. Whenever there's a storm, a Winchester is always at the center of it." Meg's laughter peeled out and it grated something awful. I tried to ignore her.

" Sam, you take care of Bella and that…thing." I said waving my hand vaguely at Meg.

She made a face, "Yea, me, Sam and Bella can have a girls night in. It'll be fun, we can braid Sam's hair and play truth and dare...FYI... I never turn down a dare." Her voice dipping to a throaty whisper quirking a smile in Sam's direction. Sam gulped and gave me the, are you effing kidding me look.

I wondered briefly if we could trust her. She hadn't exactly proven herself reliable, when the going got tough Meg started running. She would probably just skip out again like last time. I hoped I was making the right decision leaving them alone with her, "Yea, OK, we better go." Sam gave me a firm nod, I could see that he thought he could handle it, I hoped to God he was right.

I put my hand on Daryl's shoulder. He shrugged me off as he stood. I noticed how tightly he was holding the crossbow, his knuckles white and the forearm so tense that his tendons furrowed deep. "You don't need me to do your la-de-dah magic crap," he sneered, eyes blazing.

I hated asking him to do this.

Daryl had just woken up and found himself sleeping next to the worst mistake of his life- us, But I wasn't about to let him out of my sight. Cas said he was important ...somehow, a multi-generational Beef with the king of Hell, that was gonna be useful.

"Look I know this is rough, we thought we were doing the right thing at the time, saving the world from demonic domination… we weren't to know that it would backfire like this."

"Spectacularly," Balthazar added with an inappropriate amount of flourish.

"You folks don't do much thinking through... do ya?" He yelled pointing an accusing finger at me. I couldn't take it personal.

"Sometimes you are damned if you do and damned if you don't," I muttered dryly, turning away. I couldn't look him in the eye anymore.

While Balthazar collected his bits, Sam drifted up and bumped into my shoulder. "I suppose I don't have to tell you to be careful."

He let out a snort, "I suppose I don't have to tell you the same."

My smile felt too tight,faker than a playmate's bumpy bits. Sam saw right through it and returned the expression in kind.

I had that feeling agian, that the final curtain call was coming. Maybe it was the last encore for us both this time. I shivered.

The three of us popped into a narrow hallway. It was way too dark and instantly Daryl and I lifted out weapons scanning front and behind. My eyes slowly adapted to the dim. Balthazar walked confidently to a door, the number was 1408. The Angel ran his hand over it, his fingers stroking it's surface intimately.

" Um… do you want me and Daryl to... um leave you two alone for a while."

"This is the place," Balthazar said suddenly, almost too brightly.

I was getting antsy and pushed past him, starting work on the lock. I caught Daryl staring at me as I jimmied it, "... The unexpected blessings of a misspent youth," I joked."Open sesame." I pushed the door open and peered inside cautiously before turning to Balthazar, "So hows this going to work then?"

"It will just be a waste of my time and yours explaining it," He shot back as he strolled inside.

I grit my teeth and looked around at the empty cold looking apartment, untouched. There was a fine film of dust coating the glass coffee table. I ran my finger across it, making a trail in angel dust. I smirked at the thought and looked around but there was no sign of a party here, no sign of life even. Daryl hung back by the door shifting nervously from one foot to the other. "Just try me Balthazar. This isn't an ordinary summoning ritual is it...Come on this place is deader that Norman Bates ma. There ain't nothing here but boring decor and a OCD cleaners wet dream."

"Silence grasshopper." Balthazar gave me an irritated glare and then heaved an exasperated sigh. "Very well, try to keep up. This is not so much a summoning as it is a meeting in the middle. You see some Angels are… snobs. They don't really like to hang in the terrestrial plain of existence with the rest of us filth. Technically Metatron is here, but isn't here, you got it?"

"Say what?

Bathazar steepled his fingers and gave me a long look.

Curses, I squirmed "So…he's here but not here huh?" I parroted back.
Balthazar hmmmmned, then quirked a brow. "So what happens my antediluvian friend is that when I say the magic words and make pretty colored smoke, we will travel to an alternate plain of existence, and if he's home today, wholla! Metatron."

I gave him a withering look, "Sounds fun…Don't want to rain on ya party or nothing but are we gonna be OK stomping all over Einsteins grave like that?"

"Probably."
I double take, "What the...probably? What do you mean probably? Are there risks?"

"Oh I will be fine... but in the case of yourself there is a slight chance of catastrophic de-molecularisation."

"Son of a bitch!"

"No need for that language."

Daryl stepped up"I don't wanna be de-materialized either," He pointed an accusing finger, "what are you playing at smug-ass?"

"Oh for Gods sake, you will both be fine, just keep you arms within the vehicle at all times and try not to move, …or breathe, and it would be nice if you stopped talking now too so I can concentrate. Don't want to say the wrong word and accidentally plop you in a volcano, or somewhere between here and the 10th dimension."

"Fuck this!" Daryl spat on the ground at Balthazar's feet.

Balthazar (for once)was speechless…but not for long " now that's just charming!"

"Just get on with it." I grumbled my voice trailing into a tired sigh.

Balthazar opened the sack, I grimaced as he put a lump of what looked suspiciously like offal in a silver bowl, "I don't even want to know what that is."

Daryl leaned against the door jam, the only sign he was nervous was the way his finger tapped on the stock of his crossbow. I stare at him for a moment, "Daryl, sorry you know about your brother." I've lost a brother too was what I wanted to say, but something stopped me. Sure I had lost Sam several times, but had never actually let go of him. How do you even compare your loss with his, Sam didn't stay dead. Most folks do, it's only us god-damned Winchesters who have plus one to resurrection.

Balthazar took the quill flicking it with a flourish and dipped the point it in a vial of blood, He began to write symbols on the floor, Enochian, but their arrangement was unfamiliar. He then poured the remaining blood in his cupped hand and then smeared a sizable circle around the markings. He put the bowl-o-guts and assorted herbs in the center, It was starting to just look like a roundabout way to prepare a haggis. He placed the quill in the bowl and looked up. "Come on, into the rabbit hole we go."

We stepped into the circle, the fetid smell of the bowl making my throat dry and my stomach churn or perhaps it was the thought of getting completely obliterated from existence and being broken down into mere atomized residue at the word of an Angel that once named himself I P Freely!

Balthazar's arms snaked around us both pulling us tightly into the circle and then he breathed a lyrical stream of Enochian.

It was a weird sensation, sort of like being pulled everywhere at once until every part of you was present in every corner of the planet. A sense of complete overwhelming knowledge and then there was the crunch that sucked it all away in a blur of dark and light eclipsing one another merging to create a color that I could not even describe, there were no words for it. The colour of compression, re-formation, the shade of life. Then we were standing in a room not completely unlike the one we had left, but the edges were sharp and glittery, like super HD reality, spangled by a Rainbow Dash chem trail.

Daryl pats his hands on his chest, his mouth ajar and his eyes slightly glazed.

"Oh look, it worked, fancy that!" The surprise evident in Balthazar's voice was a mite grating.

"Uh huh I don't think house cleaning has been in a while," I remarked, looking at the piles of papers that were strewn across the coffee table. I also noticed a bottle of scotch only a ¼ full, no glass. I instantly got the impression this guy was a slob.

I look at the strange Enochian marking handwritten on the piles of paper, they were messy, stained, there was whole lines crossed out. What was this guy working on the next great Angelic novel? He would be cornering the market there, that's for sure.

There was a sound of a key in the lock, we all turn around slowly as the apartment door opened. A tall but stooped figure stepped inside. He wore a fedora and a Hawaiian shirt and faded jeans. The ageless dark eyes regard us for a moment, His mouth turned down at the corners.

"Metatron my boy, so nice to see you." Balthazar held out his arms in welcome.

The Angel twitched in response, "Nice would be having some warning, I have better things to do than to respond to ill conceived summons by primate descended illiterates."

I gave Balthazar a sideways glance, "Really? This guy?"

He made a show of ignoring me, " We are in need your help."

" Balthazar, I can't even help myself, I am trapped in a Maze of wordless iniquity, my muse has abandoned me, I am wallowing in the cesspool of despair, and the subjects I was writing about have turned into mindless zombies."

"Brother, we wouldn't call you without good reason."

"Reason, there's no such thing left, the hoards out there don't have any reason apart from ripping and tearing the living apart."

" This monkey here…" Balthazar waved his hand in my general direction. I got the irresistible urge to break it. "…closed the gates of Hell, There must be a way to fix it?"

"I know what they did, I wrote that it was possible. That someday it might be required, but I never dreamed my father's pets would close it prematurely, before they had ascended their fleshy prisons. There's no easy solution, solutions don't just appear, they are the work of divine inspiration and as you can see, I am lacking in that department right now."
Balthazar snorted and looked at me, mirth in his eyes "The great scribe has writers block."

"Yea I got that," I snarled back.

This clearly irritated the Angel, he pulled off his fedora and ruffled his black hair, It was so oily it stood up on end. "You don't know what it's like, I have been stuck in this cursed state for 2 thousand years, wrangling with words that deny me satisfaction. I keep hoping and praying for a lightning strike from above, but all I have are these stale, meaningless, empty words." Metatron waved his hands around as he spoke, with grandiose and flamboyant gestures. What a Douchebag!

I look down at the piles of paper, "what were you writing here?"

"Oh a pile of steaming horse shit called a romance novel; it was going passably well until one of my subjects turned Zombie and started eating the others face off in the literal sense."

I couldn't resist the chuckle that boiled up.

"Well …you are coming with us, maybe we can inspire you."

Metatron gave me a disbelieving glance before turning to Balthazar who gave him a toothy smile and a shrug, "we are not leaving until you agree"

"Do you have... other humans with you?"

"Yea we have a happy little family for you to write about."

"Non flesh eating varieties?"

"…yea, for the most part." Minus the Demon, and Sam's demon blood addiction.

Metatron looked down at the circle of blood and guts and snapped his fingers. All at once my body imploded upon itself, too quick for pain, other than the fragmented awareness that I was no longer together in the fleshly sense.

Then I hit the floor blinking rapidly, shaking all over, across from me Daryl gagged, over ringing ears I heard Balthzar chuckling "that was uncommonly mean brother."

"What the Fu..." I was cut off by my own gag reflex.

Ignoring us Balthazar handed the scribe his plumed pen."I assume you would like this?"

"Oh that old thing...Thank you...I wasn't pleased to find it had gone missing."

"Just keeping it safe for you old boy, now shall we write ourselves a happy ending."

I found my feet and reached down pulling up Daryl, "Lets go..." I managed without the accompanying gag this time.

I flinched when Balthazar put his damn hand on my shoulder, God I hated this angel travel shit. Worse than being stuck on a long bus ride with 30 puking 1st graders.

AN Finally updated...so sorry, you've all probably moved on with your lives, sigh.

So a couple of things, my Metatron is not Season 8's, I decided to go a different way, he's very loosely based on the writer character from Stephen King's 1408- note the reference.

Not very well edited again- Self editing is hard- learner that I am. Tried my best.

I'm not entirely certain what's going to happen next but It may involve Jane (twilight), I've always wanted to get into her head, might be fun...Perhaps Aro has taken a liking to delicious Castiel in the last chapter- and who would blame him for that.;)