Who: Dean, Gretel, Cas and Michael What: A couple of idiots attempt a showdown with Michael, plus Gretel When: Early day 7 Where: The Office Warnings: Gross-ness Status: Complete
There wasn't a lot to do. Dean checked over the components of the colt to make certain it was all in working order and loaded.
There were unanswered questions. Dean didn't know if he’d be able to draw, let alone shoot. That's what Gretel and Castiel were for. They had to keep Michael distracted. Hopefully. Whatever was powerful enough to manipulate the hotel and everyone in it was potentially up there with whatever Dean had faced. That was saying something.
It also didn’t stop him.
Dean was an idiot.
He probably would have gotten out of hunting if he wasn't.
---
Gretel had a lifetime of battles under her belt, some heavily plotted and planned, some completely off the cuff. Most were somewhere in between, because she and Hansel knew each other’s strengths, weaknesses, and strategies as if they shared the same mind. This was different.
Hansel had not been happy about the idea of his sister using magic- without the years of memories here at the hotel, he still wasn’t used to the fact that she’d accepted herself for what she was. The tensions between them had come to a head, but if they were all to be sent back anyway, she could swallow the heartache that came with the difficulties between her and her twin for this (possibly final) battle. The plan was simple; catch the thing calling itself Michael off guard, bind him from being able to defend himself, then kill him with one of Dean’s special bullets.
She entered the office first, alone.
---
The door was open. Michael was there, but his smile was different. He was no longer warm and avuncular. This was the barred teeth of something utterly primal and devastating.
“Gretel, how can I help you?” Michael asked, as he always did.
Dean waited outside in the lobby, listening carefully for his cue. Years of practice since childhood made him hyper aware of even how much sound his breathing made.
---
Castiel stood coolly near Dean. He had already voiced his doubts of the gun’s effectiveness on Michael, but the angel did want to do something. He’d not yet told Dean what his new memories foretold of his future. Dean didn’t know that Cas would be killed by Lucifer. If Michael was, somehow, the least bit honest about his intentions he would imagine Dean would be very dismayed at Castiel’s tight lips. But, then again, Dean would probably not remember any of this.
Cas was on alert for any sounds of distress from Gretel’s visit with Michael. The plan was, as it stood, Michael attacks Gretel, Cas protects Gretel, Gretel binds Michael, and Dean shoots Michael. Cas wouldn’t pull any punches, but his doubts of the plan were countless. Then again, that had never stopped him before. The same sacrificial thread that ran through Dean guided Cas down the path of stupidity as well.
---
A blind man would’ve been able to see the difference in Michael’s face. Gretel had known plenty of horrors in her life, before and after the hotel, and they always struck the same deep-running nerve between her shoulder blades. She breathed in, ignoring the heat in her lungs.
“How can you help me?” she parroted back his words, watching his very human- but somehow still very disturbing face. “You can leave. Go back to wherever it is you came from- and stay there.”
----
Michael’s laugh was worse than his smile. It was similar to a giggle, gleeful. Very gently he reached over and pushed the potted plant on the side of his desk off until it crashed onto the floor and shattered.
“No,” he said, with an eerie childlike petulance. “This place is fun. You’re so much fun. I think next week I’ll remove your memories of this ever happening, just so I can have another go at it. I’m learning so much from this place, from you.”
Dean’s muscles tensed when he heard the broken plant shatter but he didn’t yet bolt into action.
---
The noise that came out of Michael’s mouth was more grating than the shattering porcelain; Gretel knew she’d caught a glimpse of whatever his true nature was before, but now it was on full display. Though he still had the same face, the mask had clearly been removed.
“What are you,” she demanded low, knowing the two sets of ears outside were straining to hear.
---
“I’m an Architect,” Michael said. “I design little pocket afterlives. Do you mind? I’d love to get your opinion. I think with a little tweaking, I can really get this down. You hitching your wagon to someone like Negan? The torture writes itself. I don’t normally get to explore my work with souls like yourself. And sure, we could bring out the fire and brimstone, but that’s not nearly as fun.”
Michael was gleeful.
---
“You want my forking opinion- fine.” In the back of her mind, the strange changes to the hotel, the ‘encouraging’ messages, the profanity filter all suddenly made perfect sense, but her focus wasn’t on the epiphany; it was locked on the revealed evil in front of her.
There would be no better time- no sense in waiting out whatever this creature’s plan might entail; they had to act now, and it had to start with her. Without further warning or delay, she twisted her hand back to grab the bundle of willow branches that hooked on her belt- the hunk of raw quartz at the end already glowing with her intent, but she barely got it off her hip before an invisible force slammed her back against the office wall, with enough power to splinter drywall and wood and Gretel’s ribs, strangling her voice at the top of her throat.
-----
At the startling sound of Gretel’s body being slammed against the wall Cas made quick work of the distance between the lobby and Michael’s office. It was time to test out how serious Michael was when he’d said the angel was higher than him and more powerful.
Face pinched into an aggressive line, Cas jutted his hand out at Michael to force him back and break his hold on Gretel.
“Let her go, Michael,” he demanded in a growl.
---
Michael was shoved backward. It wasn’t as dramatic as Castiel might have liked. Michael wasn’t a soldier, he wasn’t the best at defending himself, but he had had certain, specific powers. It did succeed in letting Gretel go.
“Have you ever seen the movie Akira?” he grinned at the two of them. “That scene at the end? Where the one guy kinda explodes into.. Well, it sort of looks like cat vomit and everyone else has to kill him as he becomes this giant, disgusting bulbous thing?”
Michael grinned.
---
The moment Cas intervened, the invisible nails holding her against the divot she’d made in the wall evaporated and dropped Gretel harshly to the floor. Her lungs took their time to recover, pulling air in against muscles pinched by cracked bones; she wouldn’t have understood anything Michael was saying even if she wasn’t struggling to get back on her feet- but she felt the alien tingle and ache in her hands that made her mother’s wand difficult to grip.
With a growl slicing through the breaths against her bared teeth, she forced both uncooperative hands around the end of the branches, and flung every bit of the magic she could summon in her blood toward Michael; brilliant white energy shot from the crystal on the end like a canon, and pinned him against the office wall.
---
To be honest, Cas was surprised that he was able to affect Michael at all. He watched Gretel drop from her pinned state and looked back at Michael as he referenced a movie. Castiel tried searching his memory for Metatron’s downloaded media but before he could find anything his hands started to swell and morph. He could feel his grace fighting against Michael’s power, but it wasn’t enough to keep his fingers from becoming more and more bulbous. He watched the transformation with morbid fascination.
The angel looked to Gretel, noticing her reacting similarly. He loosed his sword, only barely catching it with the malformed and heavily veined digits as she activated the magic from her crystal.
His blade was quickly losing itself in his ever mutating limb, but it was still visible enough to use as he pointed it in Michael’s direction, waiting to see if the magic would bind him enough for Cas to get a stab in or Dean to get a shot in.
“You have terrible taste in movies, Michael,” Castiel muttered, frowning as his arms kept expanding through bulging veins. His grace was stabilizing it, but was fighting against mutation after mutation to prevent him from losing form all together.
---
“It’s a classic,” Michael said cheerfully. Even as he was unable to move, he didn’t look particularly worried. Though he was a master of psychological manipulation and it was impossible to tell if the lack of concern on his face or apparent cheer was genuine or not.
Dean appeared in the doorway, saw what was happening to his friends and said, “Oh fork.”
The Colt was already in his hand, loaded with the hammer pulled back. All he had to do was raise his hand and pull the trigger.
Michael looked up at the hunter in the doorway. “Ha! Like that would ever--”
Dean raised the gun and shot. The bullet struck Michael square in the forehead and cackled with magical energy. The architect collapsed, dead.
---
Gretel actually felt when the evil entity that kept calling himself Michael was no longer in the room; she dropped to a knee with the rustic wand clattering to the floor, gasping like a massive weight lifted off her chest. It took a few moments for the static to clear, but she could see her hands- braced on the flat office carpet- were back to normal and no longer swelled or horribly throbbed.
-----
Castiel watched Michael’s death with little emotion other than resolution on his face. He felt his hands and arms return to normal from their mutated state as the lightning stopped in the Architect’s body and the pale man’s face fell into a death stare. He glared at the form, still not able to see Michael’s true self through the human façade. Though he could tell that the human body was dead.
He turned back to look at Dean.
“We probably should have done that earlier this week,” he said, deadpanned. Though he knew it was wise to wait, knowing it had actually been that simple (relative to all of the things that he had been through with the Winchesters that were not that simple) killing Michael earlier would have been preferable.
---
Dean was still trying to shake the image of Castiel and Gretel’s mutating flesh from his mind. His arm slowly lowered again, but he didn’t holster the weapon just yet. The hunter was still processing. He’d seen a lot of things, but usually it was just some flavor of violent death.
“Yeah.” He paused. “I need a beer.”
His eyes looked from Castiel and Gretel, giving them both another look over to make sure they were fine. “How about you two?”
---
Gretel got back to her feet with some effort, but once she had and saw Michael’s shell of a corpse, she felt measurably better, despite the soreness in her ribs. She’d definitely had a lot worse.
The fact that she’d actually managed to do what she did with the wand in her hand was still sinking in. It took a lot longer than the simple killing of a dangerous enemy.
“Something like that,” she answered Dean- glancing at him and then Castiel in the process. Her thoughts were bouncing between the here and now, and somewhere else. “I have to speak with Hansel... “ Gretel headed for the door, giving Cas and Dean both thankful squeezes on the arm or shoulder on the way. “...maybe I’ll be down after.”
---
Castiel took her shoulder before she left entirely.
“I know it’s not long until the hotel makes us as we arrived, but…” Castiel said, putting his fingers to Gretel’s head, “...after a victory such as this it would be nice not to be in pain until that time.”
The angel’s mouth upturned slightly.
“I hope that wasn’t an invasion. I think it’s fair that all vestiges of Michael’s influence be vanquished,” Cas said. “Gretel, I know you’ve been here a long time, far too long, but know that despite all of the trials you have been forced to participate in you are appreciated. I hope someday the hotel will let us find our peace. Until then, I am happy to have you in my company.”
---
Still taken a little back by the sudden attention while everything else was still processing- and the fact that a mere touch to the forehead (which she almost recoiled from, given the level of adrenaline in her blood) cured every creak and ache left in her body- Gretel made a sound somewhere between a lost ‘um’, a breathy ‘thank you’, and a laugh.
“I uh- yes,” she finally found her voice, and her smile- which was genuine and slightly more into one cheek. “I feel the same.” Then to Dean, she motioned gently toward the angel. “- he’s always like this?”
----
Dean exhaled heavily. Now that they were okay, Dean opened up the chamber of the colt and began to take out the four remaining bullets. As far as he knew, there would only be four next week and it was important to conserve them in case of all powerful deserving assholes like Michael.
“Yeah, more or less,” he said. Dean did not go into the times Castiel had gone insane or become a hedonistic human in the zombie apocalypse in an alternate dimension. “Go check in with your brother. You feel like coming back down for a drink, awesome. But you did the hard part. I just pulled the trigger. You do you.”
He offered her a smile and a slight nod of his head.
“Hold on, I gotta check something…. Fork-- goshdarnit!. Well, maybe next week.”