The hotel floorboards creaked underneath Ezra's feet as he padded down the hallways.

He knew that they had come to the the right place— that Loki was here. It hadn't been hard to narrow that down once Gabriel had opened the elevator doors and started what had practically been a shootout straight from a movie; complete with the flickering lights and all. Unless the hotel owners here took the safety of their guests very seriously, there was no other explanation for why the upper floor had been crawling with armed gunmen. Not that any of the owners could probably afford gunman anyway. All the buildings Dean had passed in Baby on the way here had been sagging with old age, and the one Ezra was currently prowling around in was no different.

It was too cold, too ugly, and too quiet for a place that was supposed to be housing the trickster of all tricksters, but he figured that's what Loki would want his pursuers to think. So he pushed on.

Ezra paused as he turned another corner, realizing he had gone in a loop. Four left turns in a row. That means he should be back where he started, only that wasn't the case. Instead of the rusty elevator that he, Sam, Dean and Gabriel had made their grand entrance and then consequently split up from, there was a nice set of pearly white doors staring him down. A part of Ezra felt calm at the sight. Like he should be opening them and stepping into whatever lay behind without a second thought. Trust me, the white wood whispered. I'm your friend.

The other part of him turned around to catch Loki's hand before he could stab him in the back.

"Whoops. You caught me."

Ezra's eyes widened a fraction of an inch at the carbon copy of Gabriel that stared back at him. Gabriel had said that he'd taken on Loki's face when he'd gone into hiding from heaven, but Ezra didn't expect him to have meant that literally.

"Loki?"

"I have to hand it to you kid. You're smarter than you look."

Ezra's gaze snapped down to Loki's wrist as he felt it begin to dematerialize in his grip. Wisps of thin smoke danced in front of his eyes, and suddenly the god wasn't there anymore.

"So you are the infamous Azrael Basil." Ezra turned his gun in the direction Loki's voice was coming from now, and it ended up somewhere over his right shoulder before he could fully turn around. Loki's smug smile was waiting for him in the meantime, mouth enclosed around a sweet treat that Ezra had seen in Gabriel's own grasp many a times.

"Heard a lot about you." Loki finished, bringing the sucker away from his mouth with a loud pop, maintaining eye contact with Ezra as he did so. The lewdness of the action made Ezra's rough expression dip into uncertain waters for a moment before snapping back to its original state.

"Hope I'm living up to the legend." He managed to keep his voice devoid of emotions. The barrel of his gun was set dead center at Loki's forehead, but he didn't pull the trigger. Not yet.

"Well that's for me to decide, and for you to find out, isn't it?" Loki spread his arms with a fancy flourish, a crooked smile making itself at home on his face. Twirling the sucker stick in between his fingers, he plucked a black case out of thin air and opened it, placing the candy alongside its brothers in one quick move.

"Is that a lollipop holster?" Ezra opened his mouth before he could think to stop, and regretted asking the moment Loki's eyes swept over him in a playful manner.

"Aren't you the perceptive one?" He grinned, scratching absentmindedly at the stubble on his chin. "Want a taste?" He shook the case in Ezra's direction with a quirk of his eyebrow.

"No thanks." The gun in his hands was gripped tighter. "I don't exactly have stupid written on my forehead."

Loki didn't answer. His grin just got bigger.

"I'm going to ignore your silence and hope that I don't have anything written on my face now."

"Boo. You're no fun." He sighed. With a snap, the case was sent away, and Ezra's muscles pulled tight at the sound.

"Relax for a moment, would ya? I'm not going to kill you just yet. I've been dying to meet you." Loki rolled his eyes to an invisible audience as if to say 'can you believe this guy,' before unbuttoning the coat on his suit. The flaps fell away to reveal a pinstriped shirt underneath that went wonderfully with the hat placed carefully on a pile of golden curls, and Ezra took a split second to look down at his own outfit with a frown. Clearly he had gone into this mission a bit underdressed, if the various holes peppered in his shirt said anything.

"Oh don't feel bad." Loki waved his hand as if he could read Ezra's mind. "I could snap you up some new digs in no time flat if you'd like."

"No thanks." Ezra resisted the urge to clear his throat, clearly thrown off by the offer. "They'd just get bloody."

"You sure?" Loki raised an eyebrow yet again. He didn’t seem very phased by the not so hidden threat.

"I could get you whatever you'd like, and I'm not just talking about clothes. A smart guy like you should be able to pick up on the offer I'm laying down here."

Silence.

"You're going to make me do all the work for you, aren't you?" Loki groaned with a comical touch to it. "Let me break it down. Me: an age old god. Father of deception. The trickster of all tricksters. Okay, got it?" He sent a look in Ezra's direction, clapping his hands happily without waiting for an answer. "And you: an extremely killable human with a bit of a habit of ending the world. Not exactly the fairest of fights now is it?"

"Something tells me you're not looking to make this fight fair." Ezra hummed. Loki grinned in response.

"You're only partially right. Look, I’m thinking we can help each other out.” Loki’s complacent grin rivaled that of even the best salesman in the world.

“Word on the street is you’re looking for a gateway into another reality. Now, you could go about it the hard way like I know you have been, or—” He held up a single finger, pausing, “—or you could let me help you. All I ask in return is for you to betray those thankless idiots you call friends when it’s all over. Maybe even kill one of them. A simple trade, no? And you won't even have to sell your soul.”

“Oh no, I’ll just throw away a decade of comradery for some has-been with an ego. Easy peasy right?”

“No need for name calling. Here I thought we were being civil” Loki’s expressions darkened like the sky before a storm. It took him a second to get it back to a look of charm and eager promises. “Come on kiddo. You can’t tell me you’ve never thought of leaving those suckers behind. Odin knows that they’d trade you for the chance to find their mommy in a heart beat.”

Ezra felt his grip falter.

“You know I’m right.” Loki beamed. “What do you say? Let’s make a deal.”

The seconds stretched on as Ezra’s eyes searched his face. Looking for something to cling onto. A lie, a truth, anything at all.

He dug his feet into the carpeted floor heartily.

"Interesting offer, but I think I'm going to have to decline." He sent a falsely saccharine smile Loki's way and cocked his gun with a firm click. "I don't make deals with douche wads."

"Well if that's how you're going to be.." Loki let his sentence trail off with a sigh, taking off his hat and placing it down on the hallway stand next to him haphazardly. It was a calm and collected movement, and Ezra felt the tension roll off of it in waves. “Can’t say I didn’t try!”

Without so much as a warning, Loki’s hand shot out, and Ezra felt himself being thrown backwards as his gun went flying.

One of the hallways' rotted walls splintered under the weight of his back as he made sudden contact with it, his elbows and the heels of his feet knocking against its surface painfully. They yelped at the feeling, and it was louder than they'd like to admit.

He had enough of his bearings together as he scrambled up, using the wall behind him as a crutch all the while, to realize that Loki didn't even have to touch him to hurt him. A part of his brain yelled that hurting Loki wouldn't be as easy as he thought either. That was all but confirmed as he went to take a swing at the god, just for his fist to be caught in an iron grip.

Loki wiggled his eyebrows, and Ezra swallowed.

This time, there was nowhere behind Ezra for his body to go flying, so he just hit the wall with a loud noise before sliding down the length of it again.

"You know, I see a lot of myself in you." Loki tapped his chin as he looked down at a dazed Ezra. He watched as they shakily reached for their gun that they had dropped, but kicked it away at the last moment with an 'ah-ah-ah' noise. Wagging his finger at them in a no no motion wasn't necessary, but Loki took joy in the disgust Ezra displayed at the childish chiding.

"Like I said, I see myself when I look at you." Loki gripped Ezra by his jaw, squishing his cheeks together as he brought the man to standing height; and then some. Ezra made a noise that could have been identical to a garbage disposal in any other situation and clawed at Loki's hands. His fingernails left soft pink trails in their wake, and it only took him a second to figure out that whatever he was doing wasn't working.

"Ambitious, dashing good looks, young—" Loki cut himself off with a wistful sigh. "Okay maybe I'm stretching the young thing, but you have to admit, I don't look a day over ten thousand!"

Ezra opened his mouth for a slow moment like he was about to say something. Loki raised an eyebrow and leaned in slightly, possibly in an attempt to hear whatever garbled nonsense the hunter would try to get out, before his teeth grit together in a cry of pain.

Ezra dropped from Loki's hold and took little time in scrambling away. His gun had since returned to his hand at that point, thanks to some sneaky shimmying, and he silently thanked Sam for having the hindsight to load the weapon with, well, the ammo that he did. Whatever those bullets were made of, they worked. At least well enough to distract a god.

Looking down, Loki saw the smoking hole in one of his shoes, and smelled his own blood in the air. His nostrils flared in poorly concealed anger as he barked out a harsh laugh, recovering quickly while flicking his arms out to tighten the fabric of his sleeves around them.

"Oh now you've done it." Loki chuckled. There was no humor behind the sound this time.

If you asked him later, Ezra would tell you that he blacked out a little at that point. That the next few minutes were filled with the blur of thrown punches and heavily drawn blood. But he'd be lying.

Ezra counted every blow sent his way, and every swing he took of his own. For each punch he sent in Loki's direction, twice as many were sent back. Each strategic kick was met with five more at full force, beating him down until eventually Ezra got sloppy. Sloppy enough for Loki to twist behind him, arm situating itself around his neck like a boa constrictor and forcing him to his knees. Ezra knelt on the carpet, trapped in a headlock and struggling for air as Loki laughed.

"I know all about you, Azrael." Loki's breath was hot and heavy along the side of Ezra's face as he gripped his neck, squeezing harder with each passing sentence. "How do you think I knew just what to offer you back there, hm? Your pal, Gabriel? Before I sent him away to Asmodeus? He was reallll chatty about you and your pals. You three must have made some sort of an impression on him." His knuckles tightened in their grip, spreading a ghoulish white quality across the stretched expanse of skin over them.

Ezra choked some more.

"He talked a lot about some of your deepest darkest secrets. Poor guy does feel bad for what he did to you, you know. But he'd never admit it. Has to keep things professional and all that. I'm sure you understand." Loki flashed an award winning grin. He could have been accepting an award on some stage at that moment, not choking the life out of someone.

Ezra did, in fact, understand. That urge to have people fill in the gaps for you, because once you said what you were really thinking, it became true, and not some urge you shoved down. He really did understand that. Or he might have, if it wasn't for the crushing pressure around his windpipe.

It took him a moment to be able to focus on anything other than the lack of air getting through to his brain, and once he did, he realized it was because Loki had taken a step back. Cold fingers were still wrapped around his throat hard enough to keep him on his knees, but at least Ezra didn't feel like he was being suffocated anymore.

"You talk too much." He wheezed. It was a barely audible sound, but he could practically feel the way Loki's face soured.

"I know how left behind you feel, Ezra. How left behind you are. I know that you'd do anything to have the connection that Dean and Sam do with somebody. That's why you give so many people second chances, isn't it? Crowley, Castiel, Rowena, and now even our own little Gabriel. When will you learn, Ezra. You’re damaged goods. Not even second rate. Try third. It's just sad at this point."

To punctuate his sentence, Loki sent a punch straight at Ezra's nose. His head snapped back with a sickening crack, hitting the stained wallpaper behind him with too much force to be okay. Something wet and bitter tasting filled the cavern of his mouth slowly, and Ezra knew without having to feel around that he'd bit off a chunk of his tongue. That was going to be a bitch to heal later; if there even was a later.

"I mean, really, what did you think you were going to do to me, hm?" Loki made a sucking noise with his teeth and rolled his eyes. "You're supposed to be the one with common sense! Sure, the four of you knuckle draggers come in here, kill my sons and then me, blah blah blah. But coming after me all by yourself? Rookie mistake, killer.”

It was tough for Ezra to pull it together enough to lift his head up. His movements felt sluggish— like he was surrounded in a thick layer of molasses. But he managed, situating his head upright enough to get a good look at Loki’s face.

“I really must have done a number on you if you’re smiling at a time like this.” Loki mirrored Ezra’s toothy grin with a condescending air, albeit his a little less bloody than the other man’s.

“Nope.” Ezra laughed with a high pitch to it, some blood spraying out of his mouth in a fine mist at the action. “Just happy to have a front row seat.”

Loki barely had enough time to realize what Ezra meant before Gabriel was on him, pulling the trickster away from Ezra and throwing him across the small room. Sam and Dean poured into the hallway soon after, the former wasting no time in crouching down to drape Ezra’s arm around his shoulders and then away from the fight while Dean shuffled alongside them with a limp of his own.

Sam asked them a question, and then asked it again in a louder tone when Ezra didn’t respond. He was too busy watching the fight between Loki and Gabriel as they circled each other. The energy radiating off of them reminded Ezra of an alley cat fight, only if the alley cats were two superpowered beings that shared the same face. But like before with Loki, it was his words that really caught Ezra’s attention more than anything. Specifically the way they were directed as Gabriel with such deadly force and accuracy.

“Poor Gabriel. With his dead beat Daddy and his mean older brothers.”

A kick was sent to Gabriel's ribs. He was sprawled on the floor now, caught off guard at some point in the stand off. Sam and Dean only watched. They knew better than to get involved in this fight.. They all knew that Gabriel had come here to kill Loki on his own, even if that meant he got hurt in the process. Or worse.

“Who will help me! Who will save me!” Loki mocked Gabriel cruelly.

Another kick.

“I did.” Loki’s voice contained nothing but pure rage as he pulled a similar move on Gabriel like the one he had done with Ezra earlier. The archangel’s toes skimmed the ground as he was hoisted in the air by his coat lapels, nose brushing against Loki’s similarly shaped one.

“But you couldn't keep one single promise. And then you had the audacity to ask me to help you? Again?” They tumbled backward in a streak of furious red and black.

Ezra found he could no longer see either Gabriel or Loki over Sam’s height, so he shifted in his grip to catch sight of the two of them again, stopping only when Sam squeezed him around the middle. A sign to hold still.

“You think I deserve to die for your spinelessness?” They heard Loki all but spit. His face was red, and his finely combed hair was now frizzed up like a madman’s, no doubt having been mussed up in one of the two fights he had picked this evening. “That my sons deserve to die?”

Gabriel was shoved into another wall yet again.

“Of course.” Loki licked his lips, lowering his voice to a timbre that only Gabriel could hear. “Of course you would need someone to swoop in and save your pitiful ass.”

“Shut up.” Gabriel managed to get those two words unlodged from his throat, only to have Loki toss him away once again. Ezra had a fleeting thought that he could have been the god of throwing people across the room in another life, but his attempt at humor was lost even on himself.

The two grappled for one more moment until eventually, when the dust settled, it was Gabriel that had the upper hand this time. His left palm was digging into Loki’s chest, keeping him in place as the wooden sword he’d brought to the battle lay digging into Loki’s front. A promise of what was to come.

“Face it old friend.” Even with the threat of death looming over him, Loki couldn’t shut up. Fueled by an anger like no other, he continued. “You’re a joke. You’re a failure. You live for pleasure, and you stand for nothing.” Loki’s eyes flickered over to Ezra and the Winchester’s at that. “And in the end? That's exactly what you’ll die for.”

Nobody said anything as Gabriel stared into eyes that were an exact replica of his own, right down to the rage and fear that threatened to boil over at all times.

“You first.” Gabriel whispered.

Loki’s body slid off of the end of the katana as Gabriel pulled it back. It slumped to the floor in a lifeless heap; an uneventful end to a very rough fight.

The archangel didn’t turn to look over at the audience he’d collected for a long while, and when he did, it was only to nod. A sign that it was over. Loki was really dead, and that he had completed what he’d set out to do.

“Come on, we should go.” Dean’s voice was gruff with the command, but nobody moved. It was like they were all under some sort of spell, watching Gabriel with bated breath as his eyes flickered to Ezra’s.

“Loki. He offered you everything you’re fighting for. All you had to do was betray me.” Gabriel hesitated with his words for a moment. He licked his lips almost nervously. “Why didn’t you?”

Ezra saw Sam and Dean look at him from the corner of his eye in a confused motion. He inhaled sharply. Ezra wasn’t all that surprised that Gabriel had overheard what he and Loki had been talking about— in fact he would go out of his way to say that Gabriel had heard the whole damn thing —but knowing and actually talking about what had been said was a whole other thing.

They winced as they pulled themself up to their full height, making a noise of pain in the process they hoped was quiet enough to pass as a weird sigh. Judging on the concerned face Dean pulled, it didn't.

“Not that I owe it to you to explain myself, but—” He cut Gabriel off from whatever he was about to say with a stern look, “—you of all people should understand. Family sucks, right? You said it yourself. I lost mine a long time ago, so I got my friends instead.” He stopped to look at Sam, who was still letting Ezra hang off of him. Somewhere else in the hallway he knew Dean was listening too, and spoke a little louder so he could be able to hear.

“Even if they’re stupid sometimes, or a lot of the time, they’re all I know. Betraying them would be like betraying the only people around that still have my back. And like I told that little shit Loki earlier, I don’t exactly have stupid written on my face.”

A pregnant pause filled the room following his words. Ezra watched as an array of emotions flickered across everyone faces; from pride and relief on Sam’s face, to a steely but quiet respect on Gabriel’s. Ezra was sure he was displaying some of his own in the moment, and took a shaky breath.

There was another moment of comfortable silence before Dean broke it.

“Hey, Ez? Listen, about the whole stupid not being written on your face thing—”

Ezra jerked his arm away from Sam as his hand flew up to touch his forehead. Pulling it back, he found black ink staining the tips of his fingertips, and let out a strangled noise of anger.

“Oh come on!”

Gabriel’s face broke out into a smile as Dean laughed heartily. With red ears, Ezra threw his hands up. The pain in his body was too busy being masked with embarrassment for him to care.

“Was anybody going to tell me that, or were you all just going to let me walk out into the street looking like this!?”

“Well, I mean, your hair covers most of it—”

“Gabriel, don’t finish that sentence.” Sam closed his eyes and laughed like he couldn’t believe the conversation he was having. “We’ll get you cleaned up back in the car Ezra. For now let’s get out of here before police respond to a call about gunshots.”

With a reluctant grumble, Ezra pulled the front of his beanie down further, bringing it to the top of his eyebrows and hoping that did enough to cover the black writing.

“I really hope that asshole didn’t make it permanent.”

“Oh, you have to let me get a picture if that’s true.”