Hi, first time poster! Okay, this was a very old fic on fanfiction.net I believe. What I remember was the following:

1: It was before Metatron was introduced to the show, but a version of him was involved.

2: Crowley, Balthazar, Gabriel, and Bobby all were helping fight Lucifer in a second apocalypse

3: Sam was kidnapped partway through and tortured into saying yes to Lucifer

4: Sam ended up dying, and Gabriel went to heaven to retrieve his soul

Thank you so much in advance!

misachan

• Old Testament style smitey-ness
• Any of our other characters (Dean, Sam, or Bobby) freaking out/surprised by Cas being so other
• Angels interacting with one another in a weird/inhuman way
• Background snippets of life before the Winchesters, eg, why Balthazar calls Cas Cassie
• Angels being...angelically violent? You know, doin' stuff all impossible-like, lol, which I guess doesn't have to be violently, but at the time I was thinking of fighting. but really I guess it could be anything
• Cas trying to explain something or having something explained to him that just doesn't work because the fundamental worldviews of the characters are just that different
• On that last note: You remember how...somewhere in season 5...with the Whore of Babylon! Anyway, there's the whole "you breed with the mouth of a goat" thing and Cas is laughing and nobody gets it and then he says it's funnier in Enochian? Any chance there's any fic which covers that kind of translation issue? If there is, I imagine it'd be cracky...very cracky.
• Any fic where Cas isn't/wasn't "just a foot soldier" or, you know, one of the lowest ranks of angels, because it's freakin' canon that Castiel was Uriel's superior until he got demoted! And really, why would half the Host (or at least enough to cause real concern) follow Cas if he didn't at least have some consequence? It seems a pretty common fandom trope to cast Castiel as an angel of no note, but I find that hard to swallow. At the very least he was a very good soldier as he a) survived a siege in hell (where apparently it wasn't uncommon for angels to die as isn't that what supposedly happened to Balthazar and the main surprise came from that fact that he was, you know, not dead?) b) survived fighting to protect the seals when we know angels were dying in the conflict. It's explicitly stated. and c) pulled Dean out of hell and then proceeded to put him back together again...which I guess another angel could've done, but, well, they didn't.

beccakarr