Chapter Text
Misha stepped back from the stress filled environment that was the library with the guise of fetching up another round of coffee (He had to win rock paper scissors for this, as everyone wanted an excuse to back away from the research). His vague memory informed him that too much caffeine intake could actually kill a person, but he figured seasoned research all nighters like the Winchesters and Kevin would warn him before they reached the limit. Then again, they were also seasoned pros in declaring, 'I'm fine', so maybe Misha had to be more careful.
He ambled over to the kitchen and found Charlie typing over the laptop, headphone over her ears. He was surprised for a second, but come to think of it, she had wanted to work outside of the library so that she wouldn't disturb anyone with her click clacking. Kitchen was as good a place as any.
"Hey," he tapped the surface of the table to get her attention.
"Oh, hi," she smiled, taking off her headphone. She seemed startled but not unwelcome. "What's up?"
"I'm the proud winner of the coffee errand contest. Just wondering if you want one, too."
Charlie looked down at her mug critically, and shook her head. "Thanks, but no, I don't want to overdose yet."
"Fair enough." Misha turned to the coffee pot and found it to be empty. It was the first time in his life that he was grateful for that.
"Oh!" Charlie exclaimed suddenly, twisting to look at Misha. "You've got to wait a bit before the coffee percolates, right?"
"Yes?"
"Then could you give me more details about what Castiel'll be doing? Dean was a bit vague."
"Sure," Misha said as he finished all the steps except for the waiting. "What can I do?"
"I just hacked into every police databank in US. My current search criteria is sulphur and stab wounds, anything else I should add?"
Misha had to marvel at the unflinching violation of the federal laws. He wondered if he could bounce off few GISHWHES ideas with her after the things settled down. He was pretty sure she would be able to get more than 'leave us alone' message from NASA.
"Um, the eyes might be burned out?" Misha hazarded a guess, trying to remember the details from over a year ago.
"Burned out, like Pamela Barnes?"
"Like two black, smoking eyes."
Charlie pulled a face."Alright, burned out eyes."
"And perhaps many stab wounds, around hands and stuff. Cas's gonna be interrogating."
"He's interrogating?"
"Yeah, he's searching for the Word of God."
Charlie raised her brows but moved on. Misha was finding that the Winchesters had that effect on people. "Truth is stranger than fiction, alright, noted."
"Oh, and another, you might not find anything yet because I kind of messed up with the timeline."
Charlie's hands stopped. "You know, you could've opened this whole conversation with your last sentence so I wouldn't suffer from crippling sense of insecurity upon my failure."
"I thought you'd figure out for yourself that I was forgetting something when you couldn't find anything," Misha deadpaned, then smiled ruefully. "To be honest, it just popped into my mind when you talked about fiction. I forgot to count that in. Supernatural is just a series of events for me."
Charlie made a thoughtful expression. "Just so you know, I'm experiencing a thorough fourth wall, or fifth wall smashing, and dying to discuss more meta madness, but restraining it by my sheer professional integrity."
"I admire your professional integrity."
Charlie flashed a grin. "So, any chance of guessing where we're regarding the original time line?"
"None at all," Misha shrugged apologetically. "And I'm sorry that I seem to be heaping on more problems without giving answers, but do you think you can find a place where a demon is being tortured? We need to find Meg."
"Meg?" Charlie did a double take. "Like, the demon who possessed Sam before? Azazel's daughter?"
Misha was pretty sketchy on the contents of the show before season 4, but that sounded about right. "Yes, she- uh, kind of developed frenemy state at later seasons. We need to find the Lucifer's crypt for the Word of God, and she's the only one who knows the location."
"Can't we just skip the finding Meg phase and go directly to looking for the crypt stage?"
"We could, if I remembered anything about the crypt or if I hadn't shot the scene in Vancouver instead of in location."
Charlie sighed. "I really, really don't want to deal with Meg. I liked her as a character but I don't want her near me."
"Understandable, but I don't think neither of us would have to see Meg in person."
But on second thought, would Meg survive this time? He liked his scene with Rachel well enough and had been sad to see her go, but he didn't know how the adventure in the crypt would have turned out if Crowley hadn't come in and killed her. Meg and Cas seemed to have been written as developing some mild crush on each other, but that didn't mean Meg wouldn't show her ruthless streak once again if it served her purpose. If she ever got an inkling about something as powerful as an Angel Tablet... In any case, he might try to throttle Sam and Dean if they ever brought her here 'because it seemed like a lesser evil'.
"Besides," Misha continued as he thought through his situation. "None of that will even matter if Cas actually switched place with me."
"I don't know which will make things easier to handle, Castiel being here or there," Charlie hmmed. "Anyway, I'll look into it. I expect glorious storytime in return for this."
Misha grinned. "I look forward to that."
The machine beeped, providing perfect ending for their little chat.
Misha poured coffee into five mugs. He wondered if he should make two trips or find a tray from somewhere. He saw Linda using it before, but where was it now?
"Here, I'll help," Charlie said before he could choose. She grabbed two mugs. "It's my turned to wait for some results."
"Thanks," he nodded and balanced the rest of them in his hands.
The moment he stepped in, four heads perked up at his direction. It was a bit funny to see.
"You sure took your sweet time," Kevin griped. Misha had told him he would choose scissors in the final match and the prophet, after gauging at him and his trolling grin suspiciously, chose paper. Kevin had grumbled about developing trust issues within this household.
"Keep the attitude and you'll be the last to receive the coffee," Misha informed him loftly.
"You know I like you the best, Misha."
"That's more like it," Misha placed the mug into the grabby hand, and gave another one to Linda.
"I smell favoritism," Sam accused lightly.
"You deny the awesomeness that is the Trans?" Charlie challenged, backed by Linda's raised eyebrow. Sam wisely argued no more.
They had an unofficial coffee break until Linda squinted down at her text and questioned, "you know, how helpful should the information be before I share it with the class?"
"You found something?" Dean's head snapped up.
"Yes, but as I said, it doesn't look very helpful."
"That's more than we've got. Do share."
"Alright, bear in mind that this is written in Middle English and I more or less skimmed through it. I'd have paid better attention to my Middle English class if I had known lives depended on my ability to read it," she said, lifting a thin little battered book held together with leather cord. "Someone was a bit.. obsessed about angels, it seemed. Wrote down a heated argument about how the angels obviously existed and not just in the Bible," she flipped down several pages. "The guy was a vessel material and a psychic was able to contact some angel through him. The angel came down after a decade of trying, and if you cut down all the flowery bits, essentially told them to stop bothering it. Apparently, the psychic had been very loud, and the angel told him to be grateful that it didn't use its real voice or form to warn him away."
"Yeah, sounds like them," Dean muttered.
"But being very determined to the point of coming off suicidal, the psychic somehow convinced the angel to have a few words with him. Do you know any angel named Anael?"
"I think that the name of the angel who Fell to become human? I liked her," Charlie sighed wistfully, then went yikes. She glanced at Sam. "Um, that was before she tried to erase you from your existence, of course. Sorry about that."
"No, no, I liked her, too," Sam reassured. "It just.. Heaven doesn't seem to work favorably to the human friendly angels."
Linda looked between them. "I'm starting to think that I should read that Supernatural books. If nothing else, they seems to be very informative."
"Please don't," Sam and Dean pleaded in unison.
Without any promises, Linda went back to the topic. "So the angel and the psychic argued a bit about free will and fate and how free will works if the fate is in its place. The angel said that all roads led to the same destination but the details could alter. That the universe is woven togetger with different worlds made of different choices, although there're certain sealed or connected? points. The psychic asked if he could see how else his life could turned about and the angel said that angels weren't allowed to meddle with humans in anyway. The psychic persisted, asked for another way, but the angel said that only angels had the power for it, told him to desist in his hopless persuit and never came back."
The six of them remained quiet as they processed the information.
"In other words, I'm stuck here unless some helpful angel give me a get out of jail ticket," Misha said at last. He aimed for levity, but didn't know where it landed. "Do you know any of them, who specifically don't have anything against Castiel or you guys?"
"Well, there is Cas..." Dean hedged. Sadly, that was the end of the rather short list of reliable angels.
"And if he's in my world?"
"Then we'll find a way. Meanwhile, we search for Cas here," Dean employed that confident note of finality he used when he was feeling like being driven into a corner. Misha thought that he would've been a lot more reassured by that tone if he hadn't played Castiel for so long. Then again, he was sure he wouldn't be here in the first place if he hadn't played Castiel.
Not particularly heartening, but it won't do any good to rail against them now.
"I guess we'll have to look for Meg after all," Misha smiled tiredly at Charlie.