"Explain."
"Well, you see, if they were all abducted by the same person, or persons, they weren't ransomed. And if they were kidnapped by the same monster or monsters, they were returned unharmed, albeit missing a few days worth of memories. So why kidnap them at all? I mean, you'd have to drug them with some pretty powerful stuff. And, frankly, I doubt any doctors are involved, given the state of the victims bodies."
"I agree, so far..."
"Well, that got me thinking... it must be something other than drugs, as anything strong enough to knock out a grown man for several days and not kill him can only be administered by someone with access to coma inducing drugs. But they take a long time to leave your system, so they would have shown up when the kidnap victims were examined at the hospital. At least some of them, right?
"Again, I agree. Go on."
"So, it can't be drugs. Obviously, drugs didn't do that..." He said, indicating the body bag of remains being hoisted onto a gurney by two nearby EMTs. "I don't know of any technologies that can do that, but in my line of work, there is something that can do almost anything... for a price. Magic."
"Magic, Mr. Winchester?..."
"I know. Trust me. Look, hear me out. I'm not asking you to believe me. Just hear what I have to say, and then judge for yourself."
"Alright."
She followed Sam's lead to Baby's trunk, opened it up, and lifted the lid of the black wooden box with red and white painted sigils all over the interior that lined her. In it was every sort of charm and hex bag and weapon useful in fighting every imaginable creature living, dead, or otherwise, and some that were neither imaginable nor any of the above categories.
Agent Scully was almost instantly convinced that she had walked into some Satanic Vigilante Murder Cult, and Sam and Dean were very high ranking members. They called themselves 'Hunters' when asked, but she suspected they referred to each other as 'Grand Wizards' or something. And Sam was not helping alleviate her new found fear. She'd never been trained to deal with death cults at the academy. That's not to say she didn't have experience with them. Just that she was never trained for it.
"Now, what I'm about to show you will prove everything my brother and I have said is completely true. All of it. Well, it'll prove some of it, at least. It will at least prove we aren't crazy. That we're not completely crazy, at any rate." Sam said, drawing a serrated, fixed blade, reverse curved bowie knife with a stag horn handle and what appeared to be runes and a pentagram engraved down the blade's spine from his belt sheath, drawing the blade across his palm and dripping the blood into a chalice filled with a feather of unknown origin, a cloth bag, darkly colored and of rough material and weave, and its unknown contents. Then he quickly wrapped his hand in a handkerchief, lit a match and set the contents of the chalice on fire.
Seeing the shock and fear in her eyes, Sam said, "This is a summoning spell."
"And what are you summoning? She said, thinking this was taking a very sharp turn for the worse, herself turning instinctually to prepare to sprint away if she needed to, when a voice said,
"Me." Castiel said as he appeared out of thin air in front of her very eyes. Dana Scully had been a devout Irish Catholic from birth, according to her mother and father, Margaret "Maggie" and Capt. William "Bill" Sculley, Sr. USNC Ret. Dec.. She didn't know how, but she knew with 100% certainty that the short rumple-suited man standing suddenly before her, materializing out of thin air in the blink of an eye, was either an Angel of the Lord or a Demon from the pit. She nearly had a heart attack, jumped out of her skin, and almost fainted simultaneously.
"What? Who? How?? What???" She stammered. Her panicked voice, not loud, but distinct in tone, made Fox Mulder come running. A Knight in shining polyester. Dean, hot on his heals, threw his hands up in exasperation when he arrived and realized what Sam had done. "Isn't it bad enough to involve these FBI jackholes, did he really have to drag Cas into it too?" Dean thought before he said, "Damn it, Sam! What are you doin'? Why's Cas here?"
"It's nice to see you too, Dean." Castiel said, dryly.
"Yeah, yeah, Cas. I thought I told you we didn't need your particular brand of 'deus ex machina' to solve cases anymore." Dean spat, still angry about the collusion between Sam and Cas as of late.
"I just arrived, Dean, I don't even know why I've been summoned yet."
"That's not the point, and you know it, Castiel. Summoned or not, you should have let it go to voicemail."
Dana Scully... Dr. Dana Scully... Dr. Dana Scully, MDE... FBI Agent Dr. Dana Scully, MDE... sat there, on a vinyl covered red bar stool with exposed stuffing peaking out of a hole picked in the seat cushion, in a small backwoods roadside diner named Shirley's, that sold both beer and bad food (the food wasn't bad. She had never eaten anything from Shirley's, and she was generalizing and being unfair about it), in a nowhere on a map town called Cross Creek, in the state of Indiana... listening to three mean discuss the Angel of the Lord that had just appeared to her out of the AEther, as he wasn't the most important thing in the world. No. Instead, they were actively talking about him as if he weren't standing right there. And, frankly, if it weren't for the fact that he was, and they were discussing that very fact, she would think she'd lost her mind entirely. And then she considered that maybe she had. Maybe she had lost all touch with reality, and had imagined the whole thing. This who thing. Maybe it was all a dream. Otherwise, this was real. She tried to anchor herself in reality, reciting things she knew to be true. Things like: Fox loved her and she loved him, her dog's name is Queequeg after Herman Mellville's Maori Character from Moby Dick, Her father had died of a massive coronary and nothing she could have done would have prevented it. But otherwise, her mind reeled at reality. But her 'really reals' mantra, as the kids call them (no they don't), were starting to help.
"As you wish, Dean. Sorry Sam. I'm not going to help. Dean won't allow it. And I have better things I could be doing. I don't sit around waiting for you to call, you know." Cas said, as he turned to leave. Whereas other angels, if they said any good-byes at all, vanished as soon as their final sentence was crowned with punctuation. Cas had picked the gesture up over the years of dealing with humans. He always gave them a few seconds to change their minds, as they were notorious for doing at the last second.
"Cas, wait." Sam said, "Don't listen to Dean. He's not the one who summoned you, anyway. And you're not here to help us. You're here to save the lives of children." Sam said, playing the poor feather duster like a cheap fiddle.
"Children?"
"Yes, Cas. And Dean knows we can use all the help we can get." Sam said, acknowledging the frustration his brother was displaying loud and clear, though silently, in the background.
"No, we don't, Sam. We got this. This thing's almost solved. It's almost bag 'em and tag 'em time. We don't need his brand of 'help'."
"Dean, we need to know what we're dealing with, and there are only two people we know of who might be able to answer that question, and we're talking to one of them."
"I don't like this, Sam. Every time you and Cas get together, I get screwed. Don't screw with me, Sammy."
"At least let him take a look. He's already here. Unless you know a creature that fits the pattern?"
Dean had to concede the point. Other than summoning the Demon King of Hell, Crowley, Dean couldn't imagine Sam making a worse choice of confidants. And Dean knew that rabbit hole intimately. Well. He knew it 'well', not 'intimately'. That was more Crowley's cup of tea. Dean was a 'steak and potatoes guy' only in the traditional food sense. Dean loved Cas like family, don't get me wrong. It's just that Sam new he could easily manipulate Cas, playing to his sense of right and wrong. Dean knew it, and worst of all, Cas knew it, and was either willingly complicit, or, apparently, powerless to resist. It was pathetic, and Dean thought Sam was a prick for doing it. But, Cas let him, so... In the end, Dean's brain just locked up... overheated from trying to understand their parasitical dynamic. The only thing Sam hated worse than Dean's violent outbursts was when he got sullen and broodingly silent. That's when he said the meanest things. Things he normally held back. True things that cut deep. He was in one of those moods now.
"I don't see anything about this that I recognize, Sam. Castiel said, examining the body, left behind by the medical examiner at Agent Scully's request.
"I know it's hard, Cas, but I promise that used to be a person."
"That's not what I mean, Sam." Castiel said, "I mean I have no idea what did this. There is nothing to go on."
"What do you mean, Cas?" Sam asked.
"Would one of you fine gentlemen mind explaining to me who the guy in the trench coat, stepping all over my crime scene, is?" Agent Mulder had had enough. He was as absolutely livid as he could remember ever being, and truthfully, the real reason he was so very angry was because Dana was eating this all up. They had her. Hook, line, and sinker. She was totally on board, all of a sudden, and he just couldn't understand why. What had these crazy Winchesters and the new 'robot man' in the Brooks Bros. suit and squeaky brown leather wingtips done to her?
"Sorry, sorry, Agent Mulder. This is our friend..." Sam started to say.