LaWS Chapter 01 - On the Road Again

Disclaimer: Supernatural and its characters are the property of Eric Kripke. Sadly, I do not own any of these guys.

A/N: This story is set about halfway through Season 5, after War and Famine have been killed but before meeting Crowley, Pestilence, or Death. I know Castiel didn't start losing this much of his grace until later in the season, but for the purposes of this story, we'll just pretend he did.
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Singer Salvage, Sioux Falls, South Dakota – April 30, 2010

It was four forty-five in the morning when the door to Bobby Singer's upstairs guest room creaked open, the sound just loud enough to wake the older of its two occupants in an instant. Dean Winchester, who had been sleeping lightly in the twin bed closest to the door, sprang up with the bowie knife he always kept under his pillow clutched in his hand before his eyes had opened. Having been trained as little more than a soldier since he was very young, Dean was acting purely on instinct now, ready to fight and protect his younger brother before he was even fully aware of it.

But when a tiny beam of light shone through the door from the hall outside, the eldest Winchester's aggression was proved completely unnecessary. Standing in the doorway was not an attacker, but someone who had come to be one of Dean and Sam's closest friends. Castiel, the Angel of Thursdays and proud servant of God, stared at the hunter blankly, his blue eyes almost glowing in the dim light that cast deep shadows around every wrinkle of his rumpled trenchcoat. Dean sighed, lowering the knife down to his side and groaning when he realized who had woken him up.

"Aww, c'mon, Cas… Couldn't you have at least waited 'til sunup to come watch me sleep? You know it creeps me out." He dropped the knife back on the bed, sitting down and rubbing his eyes as the fact that he had just leapt straight up from a dead sleep registered with his body and made him a little lightheaded.

Castiel had been staying with the Winchesters more and more often as the impending threat of the Apocalypse drew nearer. He had been cut off from Heaven a few months ago, and as time passed his angelic abilities were growing steadily weaker. It now took him quite a bit of effort to fly himself from one place to another, and he had begun to develop some slightly human traits, such as the occasional need for food and, on one horrendous occasion, carsickness. The angel had been unfortunate enough to learn about the latter trait in the back seat of the Impala two weeks ago, and only the fact that he had been the one to personally pull Dean's soul from Hell had saved Castiel from certain death via angel blade.

In spite of his unfamiliarity with humanity and his annoyingly blunt honesty, Castiel had somehow grown on the Winchesters and Bobby Singer, their surrogate uncle-slash-substitute father. The angel was unfailingly dedicated to his friends, having rebelled against Heaven itself to fight alongside the two brothers and hopefully stop the Apocalypse that his brethren in Heaven sought to bring about. Bobby hadn't been Castiel's biggest fan in the beginning, seeing as the angel's sudden lack of healing powers had made it impossible to grant the old hunter the use of his legs and he was still stuck in a wheelchair as a result. But now, after months of dealing with Castiel up close and personal, even the crusty old hunter had to admit to having a soft spot for the angel, right alongside the ones he had for Sam and Dean.

"Bobby asked me to wake you two up, since he can't climb the stairs himself," Castiel answered in response to Dean's complaint, completely ignoring the comment about watching Dean sleep. A celestial being like him had no need for sleep at all, and he didn't understand why humans seemed to find the process of losing consciousness each night so enjoyable. As a result, he also did not understand just how frustrating it was to be awoken earlier than necessary when sleep was already such a luxury for the Winchesters. "Now I think you should come downstairs quickly. I'll be waiting there, too." With that, he turned and strode out of the room and down the stairs, somehow managing to move almost as quietly on his feet as he did with his wings.

In the twin bed on the other side of the room, Sam finally stirred, apparently having sunk much deeper into sleep during the night than his brother had. "D'n?" he mumbled sleepily, sitting up and shaking his head to move a few itchy strands of hair out of his face. "Wass goin' on?"

"I dunno," Dean said, scratching his stomach and yawning while he stretched lazily. "Guess we need to go down and see."

Sam grunted an affirmative, no happier than Dean to have been awoken from a deep sleep he had only managed to slip into four hours ago, and climbed out of bed, heading toward the door with a clean shirt already halfway on. Dean snorted with amusement, and Sam turned around to face him, one eyebrow raised.

"What's so funny?"

"Oh, nothin'," Dean said casually. "Just admiring your beautiful hair, Bride of Frankenstein."

Sam glared at him, running his hands back self-consciously through his unruly mop of brown hair and making his way out of the door.

Dean laughed again. "That just made it worse, man."

"Shut it."

By the time Dean and Sam made it downstairs, dressed and relatively well cleaned-up, Bobby and Castiel were already seated at the kitchen table, eating a small breakfast of eggs, bacon, and toast. It was still weird to see Cas eating like a regular person; in the past, the most the angel would do was order a coffee when they stopped at a diner, although even then he usually just held it and didn't drink it. Now, though, he was intensely focused on the food in front of him, studiously analyzing each sensation his vessel experienced at the consumption of food (or, in regular-person speak, really enjoying it.) The room was totally silent except for the scrape of silverware on cheap porcelain plates, which surprised neither of the Winchesters; the angel wasn't much of a talker, after all, and Bobby wasn't the world's greatest conversationalist. As soon as Sam and Dean had grabbed some food for themselves and sat down, though, Dean almost immediately broke the silence.

"So why'd you wake us up at the ass-crack of dawn, Bobby? Hopefully it's important," he asked with a tired grin, biting into a piece of bacon and ripping at it as if he was exacting some kind of animalistic vengeance on it.

Bobby scowled at him. "Do ya honestly think I'd be wakin' your asses up if it wasn't important, ya idjit?" He uncrossed his arms from over his chest, taking a bite of toast to hold back whatever other words he might have been about to add to the end of that. To his amusement, Sam noticed Castiel nodding slowly, apparently siding with Bobby on this one. The gesture looked odd on an angel somehow, and when Dean noticed it he glared at Cas before turning his attention back to Bobby.

"Well, no, I just meant… It's not even light out yet, and we're not on a case."

Truth be told, they hadn't been on a real case in a few weeks. Ever since the run-in with Famine and the unfortunate side-effects it had had on Sam and Castiel, everyone had been more than willing to stay at Bobby's, researching the other two Horsemen's potential whereabouts while trying not to bring up any of the unpleasant aftereffects of Sam's demon-blood binge. The episode had definitely set the younger Winchester on edge, which saddened Bobby immensely. Dean and Sam had suffered a lot of damage to their trust in one another recently, but just when it seemed they were making progress toward mending it, that damned Horseman had gone and pushed Sam almost back to square one again. He obviously thought Dean had lost all trust in him again, despite both Dean and Bobby's attempts to tell him otherwise. Like a true Winchester, Sam wasn't going to believe something until he discovered the truth of it for himself.

"You might be," Bobby answered ominously, and Sam sat up straighter immediately, all of his attention on the old hunter now.

"Why? You have a lead on something?"

"I think so, yeah. I just got a call from an acquaintance of mine named Ross Ferguson down in Ada, Oklahoma. He's goin' on sixty-five now, so it's been a while since his last hunt. But he says somethin' weird's goin' down where he's at, and he can't figure out what."

"Any details?" Dean asked, now fully attentive himself and excited at the prospect of another hunt.

"Nothin' definitive yet. All he's got to go on is a few weird suicides in town. All of 'em were men without any prior signs of depression or even unhappiness in their lives. And every single one hanged themselves from their houses' ceilings."

"Suicides? You sure this is our kinda gig, Bobby?" Dean asked, stretching lazily. "I mean, lots of people off themselves for no apparent reason all the time. It's sad and all, but not exactly out of the ordinary."

"Yeah, well in a tiny town like that, seven suicides in two weeks is a big deal, especially since all seven of 'em died the exact same way. And trust me, if Ross says something ain't right, it ain't right. Guy knows his stuff, retired or not."

"Once a hunter, always a hunter," Dean agreed with a quick nod of his head. "So what's the plan? We go down there, figure out why these people are killing themselves, and stop whatever it is?"

"If there's anything out of the ordinary doing it, yes," Castiel added, and all of them turned to stare at him.

"What do you mean, Cas?" Sam asked. "You know something about this?"

"No," the angel answered, plainly regretful of the fact that he could no longer sense the origin of every supernatural event in the world. "But with the start of the Apocalypse getting closer, people are bound to begin acting strangely. Some people are more sensitive than others to disturbances in the spiritual realm, and they'd likely be the first ones affected by the rising of the Horsemen."

"So what, ya think it's Death?" Bobby asked incredulously. "In a tiny town like Ada?"

"I never said I thought it was anything at all," Castiel said icily. "All I know is that if something to do with the Apocalypse is happening here, we'd be fools to let this opportunity pass us by."

"Well hell, I'm always up for a hunt," Dean said, immediately glad for a chance to see some action again. "Come on, you two, get the lead out! Baby's gotta be as stir-crazy as we are by now!"

Sam just smiled and shook his head, waiting for a couple of minutes while Bobby tracked down a piece of paper and wrote down Ross's phone number and address. When he had slipped them into his wallet, Sam went upstairs to grab his bag, nearly running into Castiel in the middle of the stairs.

"What's up, Cas?" he asked, noting the tense look – or what passed for a tense look – on the angel's face.

"I'm going to retrieve some plastic sacks from the kitchen, since Dean was very adamant about it," he answered in his usual monotone. "He told me I needed them because if I, as he put it, 'lost my breakfast –'"and there were the air quotes again, Sam noticed, " – in his baby again, he would cut off my wings with my own angel-blade and deep-fry them in holy oil. I think he might have been joking, but I'm not completely sure."

Sam winced in sympathy, knowing Dean could be very unforgiving when it came to anyone damaging his car, or sometimes even breathing on it wrong. "Yeah, better safe than sorry, right?"

"I suppose so."

A moment after Castiel disappeared, Dean came out of the bedroom, bags slung over his shoulders and his usual cocky grin plastered across his face. Evidently, he had been a lot more stir-crazy than Sam had thought.

"All right!" he said, spinning the Impala's keys around his index finger. "It's time to go gank some evil sons of bitches! Right, Sammy?"

Sam grinned back, going to grab his own bags and find Castiel while Dean got the Impala started up. "Hell yeah."