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spn_summergen2020-08-22 02:33 pm
summergen-mod.livejournal.com) wrote in spn_summergen2020-08-22 02:33 pm
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Falling Slow, for Lennelle, 5/5
PART FIVE
Knocking roused Sam, jolting him into miserable motion even as his stomach dropped with dread. It couldn’t be time already, could it?
“Sam!” Dean yelled through the door, pounding again when Sam didn’t answer immediately. Sam rolled and groaned into his pillow. “Get a move on, Sam. Cas says Michael’s coming.”
Silence.
“Sam!”
If Sam hadn’t been on the verge of sleep, he could’ve imagined the way Dean leaned his ear to the door, listening for movement. He would’ve known that when Dean didn’t hear any, he’d either pound on the door again or force the lock.
Or pick it, because Dean liked to go for option C. But Sam still jolted when the door hit the wall, Dean’s voice suddenly clear. “Sam—what’re you doin’ in the dark, man?”
“Wha—?” He blinked up at the ceiling, then immediately clapped a hand over his eyes when Dean flipped the light switch, sending a switchblade through his skull.
“C’mon, man, get up.” He watched—Sam knew he watched because he didn’t hear him move away—as Sam rolled without opening his eyes, slowly leveraged up on an elbow, then got his hand under him, his body upright, and swung his feet over the edge. Sam just remembered not to put his feet down willy-nilly before they splashed into sick. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Headache.” Squinting, Sam found a safe place to put his feet, then pushed gingerly off the bed. When he turned to head to the door, he stopped short at the look Dean was giving him. “What?”
“You need to sit this one out, man? You look a little green.”
“I’m fine.” Now that his eyes had gotten semi-used to the light, he could even say so without squinting his eyes almost completely closed. His head throbbed a low warning.
Dean didn’t look convinced, but he eased back into the hall so Sam could follow him out. “Yeah, alright. C’mon. Cas is already outside.”
*
Turned out, Sam didn’t have much productive to add to the meeting with Michael. Of all the people there, Sam, as the person who had pulled him down into the cage, had the most history with the angel, and the lingering animosity for his actions remained too personal for his input to be anything other than distracting.
Not that Michael was listening to them. Adam—well, Adam was a can of worms Sam wasn’t emotionally equipped to deal with right now. Sam sat on the table in the kitchen and rubbed his fingers into the center of his forehead, from the bridge of his nose to his hairline, even knowing he couldn’t actually reached the spot that ached. That they’d left Adam in the cage for ten years when they could have freed him, could have found a way, was just one more thing Chuck needed to answer for.
He looked up without lifting his head when Dean wandered in. “There you are,” his brother announced, giving him a once-over before heading to the sink.
“Here I am,” Sam agreed. He didn’t watch whatever Dean was doing, but he heard a glass thud against the counter, running water, the clink of some utensil against glass. “Do you think we could’ve gotten him, if we’d known?”
“We didn’t know. Death and Lucifer and Chuck didn’t want us to know.” Dean’s boots thudded closer, stopped about two feet away. “Here. Drink this.”
Sam pried his eyes open, frowned at the cloudy glass.”
“Magnesium,” Dean said, winding his free hand in a hurry-up gesture. “C’mon. Drink.”
With a sigh, Sam straightened. “It’ll help me feel better?”
“Could it make you feel worse?”
Touché. Glass in hand, Sam used it to salute his brother, then drank it down steadily. He probably should have taken it more slowly, but his stomach didn’t feel as rocky as it had after the visions and he knew he needed the hydration. The minerals helped it settle better than it would’ve otherwise, which was nice. Dean was studying him critically when he lowered the glass, set it on the table by his hip. “What?”
“You see anything?”
“Some.” Not enough, probably. He took a deep breath, thinking about what he did know. “Chuck thinks hope is keeping our wounds from healing. Which is what’s keeping him stuck here and weak.”
Dean’s eyebrows winged up to his hairline. “Hope?”
Sam shrugged. “It’s an injury to souls. I guess it makes sense.”
“His hope.”
“Mine.”
Dean frowned, thinking that through. “Your hope that we can win this.”
Sam shrugged, nodded.
“So, what? The wound makes him weak. It’s not healing because you hope we can win, so he needs to—break your hope?”
“He doesn’t know that’s why it’s not healing,” Sam clarified with a grim—not-smile. It didn’t feel like a smile. Like a baring of teeth, maybe. “Yet.”
Dean rocked back on his heels, folded his arms. “Great, so—kidnapping, torture.” Wordlessly, Sam nodded—what little he’d seen definitely confirmed both. “Awesome. You don’t have to go through with this, you know. We know what his plan is—we do know what his plan is, right?”
But Sam was shaking his head. “No, Dean, I do need to. Right now, he doesn’t know about the visions. And this is God we’re talking about. If he can’t use Eileen to get me now, when he knows we know, he’ll just do something else. Maybe involve Jody and the girls.”
“So we just don’t let on you can see the future.”
“Dean,” he said solemnly, forcing his brother to meet his gaze, “Eileen’s going to ask me to help her help a friend.” He hadn’t actually seen that part, but the way the woman had disappeared from the screen, Eileen’s determination—it fit. “I can’t just say ‘no, sorry.’”
Dean sighed out his frustration long and slow without looking at him. “I just don’t like it. We don’t have the spell yet. We don’t even know if Michael will help us.”
“Cas can be pretty convincing.”
“You’ve seen that?” Dean demanded skeptically. Sam hadn’t. He’d seen Castiel on the floor in a chokehold. He shrugged. Dean grimaced, no doubt hating that this plan hinged on Castiel. But Sam could believe in their friend for him until Dean got his head out of his ass. “Well,” his brother decided, “probably can’t hurt. He’s got the best chance of any of us making a connection, at least, what with being brothers.” He shot Sam another critical look. Apparently, Sam didn’t look much better than he had because he said, “Why don’t you go lay down. I’ll let you know if anything shakes out.”
Sam hesitated, but Castiel really was their best chance with Michael. And Sam wanted to see if he could see anything else about what was going to happen. He dipped his head. “Yeah, alright.”
Dean clapped his shoulder on the way out, and Sam eased to his feet.
*
Sam settled on his bed after cleaning the sick off the floor, put his back against the headboard. He could leave things where they stood. He knew the important part: that Chuck was stuck and they could go forward with their plan as long as Sam had hope.
But he didn’t know if Michael agreed to help them with the spell. If he didn’t, everything else would be pointless. He didn’t know if Dean got back up after Eileen clobbered him. If he didn’t, did Sam care what else happened? He didn’t know what Chuck would do to him to try to get him to lose hope. Torture, sure—but it probably wouldn’t be just that. Pain wouldn’t make him lose hope. Pain had to end eventually.
But what if what he saw changed things?
Twisting the hem of his shirt between his fingers, Sam glanced to the side—young Sam and Dean smiled at him from the hood of the Impala. They hadn’t known, then, that they’d watch each other die, that they’d lose almost everyone they loved, that they’d be pawns and playthings for demons, angels, and God.
I would want the choice, Patience had said. Was this what she’d been talking about? This choice—to see and maybe change things, possibly for the worse, or leave them alone and hope.
He needed to be able to hope.
He wanted to know.
He’d be better prepared to resist Chuck if he knew. This was too important—too many people’s lives depended on this—to mess up because he was blindsided.
With a nod to himself and a cleansing breath, Sam resettled into a more comfortable position. He’d barely reach out, What does Chuck do to me running through his mind, before—
—“You want to know what happens when you win?” Chuck staring down at him, smiling briefly with benevolence. “Here. I’ll show you.” Chuck clapping, and Sam’s sitting back in the Bunker, himself and Eileen sharing a table, Dean sleeping in an armchair.
“Hey, Dean,” vision Sam says. “If you’re tired, why don’t you go to bed.”
Dean sits up. “I’m not tired. I’m not tired. I’m just resting my eyes.” He rubs his eyes with his forefinger and thumb. “I’m good.”
Castiel enters with four beers, bringing them to the table.
“Ooh, jackpot.” Dean rubs his hands together. Castiel slides a beer to Eileen and Sam, and Dean gets up and grabs his own. “Thanks. Alright, well, I say let’s call it. Movie night?” He tilts his head back, drinks.
Eileen says, signing, “I’ll make popcorn.” Dean points at her and Sam laughs.
Sam’s cellphone rings. “Oh, Jody.” Sam answers the call, puts it on speaker. “Jody, hey. How’s it going?” Silence. “Jody?”
“Sam.” Jody says weakly.
“Yeah. Hey.”
“It was just supposed to be a little nest, maybe three vampires. Claire and I went in armed to the teeth, but there were more. So many more.” Her voice sounded hollow, faint. “She’s dead, Sam. Claire’s dead.”—
—Chuck dangling a pocket watch, chain wrapped over the back of his hand. “You just set it forward to any day or time, and you can see it all.”—
—“Come on, Sam. Don’t you want to see the future?”—
—Fires burning along the side of the road, five of them, ten, more. Sam watching them, blood across the bridge of his nose, leaking from a cut on his temple, Dean bleeding from a cut on his forehead, his expression set, eyes dead, gaze not deviating from the road.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he tells Sam. “But we did everything we could.”
“No, we didn’t.” Sam swinging around, but not quite looking at Dean. “We could’ve gone in there sooner.”
“The place was crawling with wolves. We had to wait.”
“And because we waited, the victims—they all died. They bled out on the floor.”—
—They’re winning, Sam. The monsters are winning.”—
—Sam loading weapons in the Bunker’s ready room, checking a magazine before sliding it home, picking up and sliding a knife from the sheath to check the blade.
“What’re you doing?” Dean asks, coming in from the hallway, looking tired. Sam turns and Dean’s gaze goes to the weapon in his hands, the bag on the table before him. “C’mon, man, we just got back.”
Sam turns back to the bag, the weapons. “If we don’t hustle,” Sam answers with forced pep, forced humor, desperate, “the nest’ll move on.”
Dean shakes his head, looks down. “No, Sam. It doesn’t matter.”
Sam huffs like that has to be a joke, turns back to his brother when he doesn’t laugh, too. “What are you saying?”
Dean stands where he is. “What I’ve been trying to say for months. It’s time,” Dean says with difficulty. “Time to stand down.”
“You want to quit?” Sam demands, and Dean looks away like that was the reaction he’s been expecting, dreading, too tired to deal with it. He shifts and turns like he might walk out, but doesn’t. “Hey, what’s happened to you, Dean? Ever since—”
“Ever since what?” Dean demands, suddenly angry. “We lost pretty much everyone we’ve ever cared about?” He moves closer to Sam. “Ever since the Mark made Cas go crazy? Ever since I had to bury him in a Ma’lak box? Ever since then? Yeah. You know why? ‘Cause the monsters—they’re everywhere. Everywhere! What we do—it’s not even hunting anymore. It’s whack-a-mole. We don’t even save people. Every friend we’ve ever had is either dead, or they got wise and they packed it in.”
“Jody’s still fighting. And Bobby—”
“Bobby has a death wish, and you know it. And Jody—ever since what happened to Donna and the girls, she does, too. And after Eileen. . . . “ Eileen’s name brings Sam’s head up. “So do you.”—
—What happened to Butch and Sundance? Dean, what happened to going out swinging?”
“We lost, brother. We lost. I’m done.”—
—Chuck standing next to Sam on the landing in the ready room, grim. “This is the truth, Sam. This is what comes next.”—
—Dean sitting at the table in the war room with a tumbler of whiskey, Sam entering with the weapons bag over his shoulder. “I’m raiding that nest with or without you.”
Dean exhales, deflates, picks up the whiskey and downs it, resigned. He clicks his tongue against his teeth and sets the tumbler back on the table with a click. “Then I guess I don’t have a choice, do I?” He levers out of the chair and precedes Sam from the room.—
—No. It can’t end like this.”
“See for yourself. You’re holding the watch.”—
—Sam and Dean inside a dirty, rundown, barricaded motel room. Baring their fangs, they snarl and hiss. The doorknob rattles. Sam moves next to the door. The door bursts open. Sam grabs the first hunter through it. Dean takes the second, grapples with him, throws him out of the window. Sam slits the other’s throat, drops him.
From the open doorway, Jody somersaults in, comes up ready, aiming, and fires. Sam jolts, freezing, surprise slacking his face.
Dean sees him and whirls to face Jody. He hisses before jumping on her, bearing her slight weight down to the bed. He covers her bodily and tips her head back, then rips out her throat, feeding and savaging while Sam drops to the floor, sick with dead man’s blood.
Bobby sees what Dean’s done, sees Sam down, and crosses the floor quickly, lifts the machete, and chops it cleanly through Sam’s neck—
—Chuck crouching in front of Sam in the casino, expression solemn, earnest. “Think about what I showed you. Look beyond the Mark. Beyond you and Dean fanging out—heartbreaking, but not the headline news.”
Sam, bound to the chair, searches his eyes, thinks back for the common thread, and gasps. “The monsters.”
“The monsters,” Chuck agrees grimly. “Without me, it’s a law of nature—dark forces prevail, monsters rule, and you and your brother, and everyone you love, will die. Can you really live with that?”—
The last vision vanished, leaving Sam blind with pain and reeling at the scope of the loss, the magnitude of the price they and their loved ones would pay by locking Chuck away.
Naturally, that was when Eileen knocked.
*
The taps were too soft to be Dean, too strident to be anything but urgent. Fragile as his head felt, ambivalent as he felt about what he’d seen, Sam knew what Eileen felt was real, that her fear for her friend was real, and that her need was real.
That was enough to get him off the bed, even if part of him wanted to play opossum.
He pulled the door open, and tried not to look like he’d been put through the ringer. “Hey.”
Eileen’s features weren’t as mobile as Dean’s, but that didn’t make her worry any harder to read. She said it with her hands—with how briskly she’d knocked and how concisely her hands moved through the signs—in the paleness of her face, and with how short her sentences were. “I was talking to a friend. She’s working a vamp case. She’s in trouble.”
Sam wished he could’ve seen that Castiel and Dean got the spell. He wished he’d gotten another chance to talk to Dean, to hear what he had to say about what Sam had seen, because he wasn’t sure where he stood, right now, if what he’d seen was enough to change his mind—if it would change Dean’s if he knew. He wished he could tell Eileen what was really going on.
Instead, he said, “Okay. Let’s go.” Grabbed his jacket, his phone in his pocket, and followed her.
*
Sam chanced calling Dean from the car. He sat in the passenger seat while Eileen drove. He really wished they hadn’t taken her car, because he could have done with a distraction right now. He glanced at Eileen as he put the phone to his ear, but her eyes were glued to the road, her face set in determination.
“Hey, man,” Dean greeted, interrupting the second ring. “Where are you?”
“Hey. Eileen needed help. Her friend’s in trouble, so we’re heading a couple towns over to look into it.”
A beat, while Dean processed what that meant, then an audible breath. “She say what her friend was hunting?”
“Vamps.” Considering what he knew they were heading into, and the way Chuck’s visions had ended for him and Dean, Sam figured vampire Dean’s warning was real enough—he just didn’t know what vampires it referred to.
“So, piece of cake, then,” Dean replied.
“Right.” Sam huffed a laugh, slid a glance at Eileen, and switched his phone to his left hand, so his hand could hide his mouth. “Hey, Dean, I need to ask you a question.”
He could just about picture Dean frowning as he settled against a table or wall somewhere in the Bunker and crossed one ankle over the other. “Shoot.”
He drew a careful breath, darted one more look at Eileen, then turned his head like he was looking out the window. “Say we do what we plan to do.”
“We will,” Dean assured.
“Right, but—what if locking God away makes things worse?”
“What’re you talking about, Sam? Is this about—you know?”
“Sort of. I mean, what if doing it lets the monsters just—I don’t know, multiply?”
“What? Because the balance is out of whack and the darkness is stronger? There wasn’t exactly a lack of monsters when Amara was locked away, remember. All the good won’t suddenly vanish just because Chuck takes a time out.”
“But doesn’t it worry you?” He shot another furtive look at Eileen, and this time Eileen glanced back. He lowered the phone so she could maybe read his lips. “Problems with Michael.”
Her mouth opened in an O of understanding, and she turned back to the road in time for Sam to hear, “Why don’t you tell me what’s really bothering you?”
“Just—what if we do this and the monsters take over? Everyone we know dies. Everyone dies.”
“Sam, everyone dies, anyway.” He opened his mouth to protest, but Dean spoke over him. “No, listen to me. Chuck’s going to kill everyone, anyway. ‘Welcome to the end,’ remember? So, the way I see it, we can either let Chuck get his way, or we can take him out of the equation and take our chances. Personally, I prefer option number two. At least then, we’re going out on our terms, no one else pulling the strings, and we all have a chance. You with me, man?”
“Yeah,” Sam agreed. Just them and the monsters. “Yeah, I’m with you.” Was that the choice Patience had been talking about?
“Good. Alright, see you soon.”
“Yeah.”
*
Eileen wound slowly through the four-level garage, looking for where Sue Burresh had told her she was while Sam kept an eye on their surroundings. It looked like a pretty standard hunter meeting place—no security cameras, multiple exits, free, quiet. Which were also ideal conditions for kidnapping, Sam noted, with a built-in car dump site to delay discovery.
“There,” Eileen murmured.
Sam followed her gaze, but he probably could’ve picked out the vehicle by sight. It was a truck, older model, blue and white, parked alone in the corner, nothing visible in the bed, no one visible in the cab, door left open.
Eileen put the car in park, not bothering with a parking space, and they exchanged a look before climbing out. Sam tried not to think about traps, but the abandoned car, the lack of any visible people, vampire or otherwise, no signs of struggle, tickled his instincts, raising alarm flags. Would have done even without forewarning.
He shined the flashlight over the vehicle’s interior, along the front fender. If vampires had attacked a hunter at her vehicle, he would’ve expected to see signs of a struggle—blood, maybe, a dented fender, spent shell casings, something. He turned to Eileen. “She said she saw vampires here?”
Eileen nodded.
“It looks empty.” And not just no-one-here-at-the-moment empty, either.
“Look again,” an unfamiliar female voice said, stepping out from behind a pillar, an open stairway spilling light into the garage visible past her shoulder. That door hadn’t been open when they’d pulled up, and he hadn’t heard it open.
Eileen wouldn’t have been able to hear it. Relief lit her face. “Sue. You’re okay,” she said, closing some of the distance between them. “Thank God.”
A moment later, Chuck stood in her place, grinning smugly, having—he didn’t even know. Poofed Sue out of existence? He extended a hand, dismissing that what he’d done was any big thing. “Any time.”
Eileen stopped short. Sam moved closer to her. He wasn’t sure what he could do, what either of them could do, but he knew he couldn’t let her face it alone.
Then Chuck looked straight at him. “Hi, Sam. I think it’s time you and I had a little chat.”
A laugh strangled in his throat. “We don’t have anything to talk about.”
“Oh, I think we do.” Chuck smiled genially as he raised a hand, his eyes hard, and snapped.
*
Sam found himself in the car. In the Impala, not Eileen’s car, blacktop scrolling past beneath the glare of the high-beams. He started, knocking his knee into the dash and accidentally pulling the wheel hard left—but the car never wavered, didn’t veer or drift, just kept on cruising centered right between the lines.
“This isn’t real.” He slid his hands over the steering wheel, looking for a flaw, but it felt just like he remembered. The seat, too, felt molded to fit Dean.
When he turned to the right, there was Eileen, watching the road as if nothing unusual had happened. When she glanced over and found him watching her, she smiled. “What?”
“Nothing.”
The road kept rolling, nothing on the horizon, nothing passing by, nothing in the rearview, nothing—just trees and darkness and open spaces.
Then Dean was there, in the rearview mirror.
“She’s not real, either, you know,” Dean told him.
Sam jammed his knee, cursed, and flung around to face Dean. He was wearing black, with a black and purple plaid overshirt Sam recognized, and sat with a careless ease Sam hadn’t seen in—he couldn’t remember. “Dean.”
“Hi, Sammy.”
“What are you doing here?” When he turned to check with Eileen, the passenger seat was empty. The car kept driving. “What?”
“Told you she wasn’t real.”
“Then you’re not real, either.”
“No, I’m real,” Dean assured. He shifted back, hooking his elbow over the back seat and letting his hand dangle. His eyes were bright, almost happy.
None of this made sense, unless—“Am I dead?”
“Nope. But I am. And before you freak out,” Dean said, correctly predicting Sam’s next reaction, “I’m also not your Dean. Not current Dean, anyway. Current Dean, your Dean, is still back at the Bunker with Cas and Michael, probably getting ready to head into Purgatory about now. Little hard to tell, time being relative here, and all.”
“Purgatory,” he checked.
“Mm-hm. Off to get the last ingredient for the spell you need to lock Chuck away.”
“And you’re here because?”
“Apparently, you really wanted to talk.”
“How?”
A beat, where Dean looked expectant and Sam waited expectantly, then he raised an eyebrow with a smirk. “Well, we push air from our lungs through our mouth, causing vibrations in our cords that produce sound that we shape—”
“No-not not how—” Sam stuttered. He pushed air through his nose when Dean’s smirk widened. The jerk knew full well what Sam had been asking. “How are you here?”
The smirk dropped away. Dean shrugged. “You, I guess.”
“Me?”
“Yeah?”
“How?”
“Man, I don’t know,” Dean answered, laughter hidden in his voice. “You’re the one with the mystical God-mojo.”
“The what?” God mojo? That couldn’t possibly be what it sounded like, could it? No way he could snap and, like, erase someone from existence. He felt a little sick.
“Look, Sammy, I don’t know how it works. I just know you—called, or whatever, and here I am. Bet Death’s gonna have something to say about that. Now, can we talk about whatever you wanted to talk about and save this mystical bullshit for when I’m deader?”
Sam didn’t have any idea what deader would look like and didn’t want to. He honestly felt more than just a little freaked by the God-thing, so something simple sounded perfect. “Um. What did I want to talk about?”
Dean raised two judgmental eyebrows at that.
“What?” Sam demanded defensively, scowling. “It’s not like I knew I could do—whatever.” He waved a hand at nothing, like he could wave away the idea. “I don’t even know where we are.”
Assuming Dean was even real. That didn’t feel like a safe assumption.
“Don’t you?” Dean turned his head, ducking to peer out the nearest window at the passing clumps of trees barely distinguishable from the dark sky in the dark. “Gotta say, I was expecting your head to be a little bit more exciting.”
This was the inside of his head? He twisted further against the seat to be able to peer out the driver’s side window without losing Dean from his periphery.
“Granted, it’s your unconscious mind. Can’t expect that to be too active, I guess. Actually, it kinda looks like heaven, minus the douchey angels.”
Speaking of things he didn’t want to talk about. . . . Sam cleared his throat.
Dean immediately looked over with interest. “Figured out what you wanted to talk about?”
He didn’t know what to say.
“Nothing? Really? That doesn’t sound like the Sammy I know. Knew? Whatever. Point is, something’s gotta be bothering you. C’mon, spill! Frist thing that pops into your overly haired head.”
“The visions,” he said. He hadn’t realized if after he’d seen them, the horror too immediate, but having spoken to Dean and in the quiet of his mind, with an unconcerned Dean (even a dead one from the future) prodding at him, it niggled at him. “Everyone only ever told me what happened. I never saw it. I mean, I know Claire died because Jody called and told us.”
“Right.”
“And I only know what happened to Cas, or Donna, the girls, Eileen—because you told me. Because you wanted me to stop fighting. To give up like you had.”
“That doesn’t sound like me.”
“Right. But Chuck said he couldn’t see us. So why were all the visions of the future where we locked him away about us? And not us fighting and losing, but hearing about it. Why didn’t he show me Jody and Claire fighting a huge nest and getting overwhelmed? Why didn’t he show me Donna and the girls dying? Why didn’t he show me Eileen?
“Unless he couldn’t. And if he couldn’t, that means, either he can’t see what happens and he’s making it up, or he knows that’s not how things go and he just wants me to think that’s what happens. What if—”
When he looked up, Dean’s smile was pure fond indulgence. The expression wasn’t particularly wrong, but something about it smothered the words in Sam’s throat.
“I knew you’d see it, given the chance.”
His hands slid blindly along the seat hinge, searching for a weapon he knew wasn’t there. “You’re not mt brother.”
“No,” Dean agreed. “Not anymore. He had somewhere else he needed to be.”
“What are you talking about?” He wished he wasn’t at such a disadvantage, twisted into a pretzel in the front seat, space limited. “Who are you?”
He expected Chuck. Part of him definitely expected Chuck. Instead, Dean’s pale skin and familiar features melted into sharp female features, dark hair, and dark clothes under a black leather trench. Sam instinctively tried to scramble back, but he had nowhere to go.
“Hi, Sam,” the familiar, husky drawled.
“Billie. What are you doing here?” And then, because it made the most sense. “Am I dead?”
Billie didn’t smile. She never did, at them, not really. But there was something like amusement in her eyes, if a being could be amused by something it was contemplating squashing. “No,” she answered. “You are not dead. Yet. If you’re interested in staying not dead, I have some information for you.”
“You—” He thought he deserved the mental double-take, after everything. “You’re helping us?”
She inclined her head.
“Why?”
“I have my reasons. Are you going to listen?”
“Uh, yes. Yes, I’m listening.” He straightened his spine as if to prove it.
“Good. Now, this next bit has a few different endings. In some of them, you die. In some, you don’t. In some, everyone else dies. Which one you get depends on you. If you decide to lock God in the cage—”
“If?” he interrupted.
“Yes,” she confirmed darkly. “If. If you decide to lock God up, you’re going to want to remember that the spell requires a tremendous amount of power. Normally, you wouldn’t have access to that power, but these are unusual circumstances. Now, assuming you get all your ducks in a row and manage to get to the main event, and assuming you decide to go through with it, here’s what you have to do to survive it.”
*
When Sam woke, he was sitting with his arms zip-tied to the arms of the chair, Eileen trussed up across from him, looking miserable and apologetic, with Chuck standing at her shoulder, smug and insufferable.
“Hi, Sam,” he greeted, darkly cheerful.
It was remarkably easy to stick to the script.
*
“Sam!” Castiel called moments after Sam cut the second zip-tie holding his wrist. He held up a mud-colored orb about the size of a croquet ball for Sam to see, then rolled it across the floor to Sam’s feet. Sam bent, disoriented enough he almost take a header when the blood rushed to his head, but he scooped the orb into his hands.
It was cool to touch, but warm where it sat in his palm, humming with energy. Sam could feel the strands that would weave together to craft the cage that would bind Chuck from this world. All he had to do was smash it.
Smash it and lock Chuck up, free the world to be whatever it would be without God. Save the lives of everyone on the planet, or doom them?
Sam stumbled to his feet, feeling wild and unsettled as Dean yelled—“Sam, smash it! Now!”—no doubt, even bitch-slapped by God, that locking Chuck away was the correct path, no doubt that Sam would do the right thing. And then there was Castiel, crouched near the slot machines and out of the line of fire, keeping Eileen down and out of the fight. Safe. He’d worked so hard to get them here.
Sam could disappoint them both in two words, damn the world in two words, or save it. He thought of Jody’s voice when she called to tell them Claire was dead, remembered the deadness in her eyes when she’s somersaulted through a motel room door to get the drop on Sam, put a bullet through his heart. He remembered the heartbreak in Dean’s voice, hidden beneath the anger, the despair, when he’d recited the litany of their dead.
And he remembered what Billie told him.
“If you want this spell to work,” she’d told him, “it’s not enough just to smash it. You have to believe, Sam. You have to believe more deeply than you’ve ever believed before, because if you don’t—if you don’t commit one hundred percent of your energy, if you don’t use every resource at your disposal, you’re going to die. And, depending on how badly you fuck it up, you just might take Dean and Castiel with you.”
“How?” he’d asked.
“Secret of the universe,” she’d said, and smirked. “Bottom line? You’re connected to Dean because you’re soulmates. Dean’s connected to Castiel. Bonds forged in hell, you might say. And for however long you can hold out, you’re connected to God. Which, for better or worse, gives you access to power you’ve never dreamed of. So, when you cast that spell—if you cast that spell—you need to reach out along those connections—any connection you have, every connection you have—and draw that energy into the spell. Channel it, and don’t stop until the spell is complete. You understand?”
“And if I don’t?”
“Well. Best case scenario, nothing happens. Except God regains his full power. Worst case, you and everyone you’ve touched dies.” The possibility sucked the air from his lungs. “Could go either way. Or, it could just kill you. No way to know until the cookie crumbles.”
Chuck turned to face Sam, leaving Dean on the floor at his feet, no sign of uncertainty on his face. He didn’t even try to take the orb, just watched Sam like he knew him, like the ending had been decided and he was just waiting for Sam to catch up and make the decision he knew he would. Because Sam was a good guy. Because Chuck had nudged and helped and blinked people out of existence at his whim just to get his way, because he couldn’t watch his favorite story.
Sam’s gaze slid past him to Dean. “Promise you’ll never give up?”
“You and me,” Dean confirmed, “no matter what.”
Sam closed his eyes. He closed his eyes and focused on the core of energy Billie had helped him find, drew it into his own meagre strength, still star-bright, and focused so that it grew and expanded, focused past the bounds of his own energy to connect with Dean’s, with Castiel’s, with Jody’s and Donna’s and every other link he could find, until it seemed like his mind’s eye was lit up like a Christmas tree. Then he held the words Billie had given him in his mind, wrapped them in the power he’d called, and threw the orb at Chuck’s feet.
It shattered, throwing brown and purple mist in a swirl that wound around Chuck’s legs like excited dogs.
“No!” Chuck yelled, voice deep with the fury of an angry god. Sam felt, rather than saw, Chuck start forward, hand outstretched to reach Sam, to throw him, to spite him—to end this, but the orb’s energy stopped him, wrapping around his legs, then up over his shoulders, down around his waist, over his head, around his arms. It swirled faster and faster, tighter and tighter, pulled and bucked like a herd of rampaging broncos desperate to be free.
Sam locked his will around the spell, the power, sank his fingernails deep into the well of it he drew from Chuck, and pulled harder, faster, on the power at his command. He forced the spell into place with gritted teeth and locked muscles, with breath and blood and every beat of his heart, with the love of his brother and their friends, with the hope, desperate and all consuming, that this wouldn’t be a mistake, that they could build a new life out of the shadow of Chuck’s manipulations, that he and Dean and Castiel, Jody and Donna and the girls, and Eileen could cheat fate just one more time and live.
Most of all, he hoped they would live.
He held on when it felt like he couldn’t, he hoped when it felt like the well had run dry, he watched, through slitted, watery eyes, the sphere that grew and expanded where Chuck had been, until the last of the energy had coiled around Chuck, until the light grew so bright he had to close his eyes and shield his face, until the heat from the spell felt like it had scoured the skin and muscles from his bones, until every last ounce of energy was gone.
And then he dropped, and the others dropped with him.
*
Darkness.
*
Sam had been standing at the kitchen counter, staring at the eggs he’d pulled from the refrigerator for untold minutes, when he felt someone else phase into existence behind him. He didn’t need to turn to know it was Billie. Death had a distinct feel, different from anything else in the universe. But he did.
Billie studied him, stalking closer with the grace of a giant cat. “Looks like none of you are dead,” she observed dispassionately.
He cleared his throat. “Looks like.” If he reached out, he could still find the spark of Jody’s life-force burning in Sioux Falls, could find Donna and Claire and Alex, all of their friends scattered around the country. He always knew where Dean and Castiel were, felt them moving around the Bunker with barely a thought.
It was overwhelming.
“How long is this going to last?” he asked, hand drifting up to the shoulder wound that hadn’t disappeared when Chuck had. It didn’t feel like anything when he touched it, but a hum of power lingered, muddy brown and purple.
“As long as it lasts.”
“As long as I live?”
Billie’s eyes narrowed, shrewd, a savage kind of humor lighting them. “Perhaps.”
Sam huffed a breath, not quite able to summon laughter. It’d been five days since Eileen had shaken him, Dean, and Castiel awake after Sam had cast the spell. It’d been three days since Sam and Dean had returned to the casino, surprised to find it still empty, the bodies and everything exactly where Chuck had left them, to erase the security feed.
Sam crossed his arms over his chest, leaned back against the counter. “So, what happens now?”
“Now? You live.”
“That’s it?” He felt Dean enter the kitchen behind Billie, knew Billie had noticed him, too.
“If you can,” she told him.
“Well, aren’t you cheery,” Dean interjected. He met Billie’s chill gaze squarely, daring her to try something because Dean had never met an authority figure he didn’t want to challenge.
“Hello, Dean.”
“So, the spell worked?”
Sam didn’t think Billie was going to answer, but she raised a perfectly plucked brow. “God’s gone. You’re not. I’d say it worked.”
“And it’s going to hold?”
An actual smile curved her lips, small, reluctantly pleased. It sent a chill down Sam’s spine. “Now, that’s an interesting question.”
Dean raised an eyebrow back. “And the answer?”
“Nothing lasts forever. Not the work of God. Certainly not the work of men.”
“How long do we have?” Sam asked.
She turned a level stare on him, didn’t answer. He hadn’t expected her to. “I’ll be seeing you, boys,” she called over her shoulder and turned, vanishing in a swirl of black leather trench.
Dean studied the place she’d been when pursed lips. He tossed a glance at Sam. “I think we’re growing on her.”
“Yeah.” He laughed. “You keep telling yourself that.” He turned back to the counter, to the carton of eggs he couldn’t remember why he’d gotten them out. He frowned. “Hey, Dean?”
“Yeah?” Dean reached around him for the eggs, got a large bowl out of the cabinet, and started breaking eggs into it.
“Do you think things will ever go back to normal?”
“When have things ever been normal for us?”
Sam huffed a laugh.
“We’ll figure it out,” Dean promised. “We always do.”
Knocking roused Sam, jolting him into miserable motion even as his stomach dropped with dread. It couldn’t be time already, could it?
“Sam!” Dean yelled through the door, pounding again when Sam didn’t answer immediately. Sam rolled and groaned into his pillow. “Get a move on, Sam. Cas says Michael’s coming.”
Silence.
“Sam!”
If Sam hadn’t been on the verge of sleep, he could’ve imagined the way Dean leaned his ear to the door, listening for movement. He would’ve known that when Dean didn’t hear any, he’d either pound on the door again or force the lock.
Or pick it, because Dean liked to go for option C. But Sam still jolted when the door hit the wall, Dean’s voice suddenly clear. “Sam—what’re you doin’ in the dark, man?”
“Wha—?” He blinked up at the ceiling, then immediately clapped a hand over his eyes when Dean flipped the light switch, sending a switchblade through his skull.
“C’mon, man, get up.” He watched—Sam knew he watched because he didn’t hear him move away—as Sam rolled without opening his eyes, slowly leveraged up on an elbow, then got his hand under him, his body upright, and swung his feet over the edge. Sam just remembered not to put his feet down willy-nilly before they splashed into sick. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Headache.” Squinting, Sam found a safe place to put his feet, then pushed gingerly off the bed. When he turned to head to the door, he stopped short at the look Dean was giving him. “What?”
“You need to sit this one out, man? You look a little green.”
“I’m fine.” Now that his eyes had gotten semi-used to the light, he could even say so without squinting his eyes almost completely closed. His head throbbed a low warning.
Dean didn’t look convinced, but he eased back into the hall so Sam could follow him out. “Yeah, alright. C’mon. Cas is already outside.”
*
Turned out, Sam didn’t have much productive to add to the meeting with Michael. Of all the people there, Sam, as the person who had pulled him down into the cage, had the most history with the angel, and the lingering animosity for his actions remained too personal for his input to be anything other than distracting.
Not that Michael was listening to them. Adam—well, Adam was a can of worms Sam wasn’t emotionally equipped to deal with right now. Sam sat on the table in the kitchen and rubbed his fingers into the center of his forehead, from the bridge of his nose to his hairline, even knowing he couldn’t actually reached the spot that ached. That they’d left Adam in the cage for ten years when they could have freed him, could have found a way, was just one more thing Chuck needed to answer for.
He looked up without lifting his head when Dean wandered in. “There you are,” his brother announced, giving him a once-over before heading to the sink.
“Here I am,” Sam agreed. He didn’t watch whatever Dean was doing, but he heard a glass thud against the counter, running water, the clink of some utensil against glass. “Do you think we could’ve gotten him, if we’d known?”
“We didn’t know. Death and Lucifer and Chuck didn’t want us to know.” Dean’s boots thudded closer, stopped about two feet away. “Here. Drink this.”
Sam pried his eyes open, frowned at the cloudy glass.”
“Magnesium,” Dean said, winding his free hand in a hurry-up gesture. “C’mon. Drink.”
With a sigh, Sam straightened. “It’ll help me feel better?”
“Could it make you feel worse?”
Touché. Glass in hand, Sam used it to salute his brother, then drank it down steadily. He probably should have taken it more slowly, but his stomach didn’t feel as rocky as it had after the visions and he knew he needed the hydration. The minerals helped it settle better than it would’ve otherwise, which was nice. Dean was studying him critically when he lowered the glass, set it on the table by his hip. “What?”
“You see anything?”
“Some.” Not enough, probably. He took a deep breath, thinking about what he did know. “Chuck thinks hope is keeping our wounds from healing. Which is what’s keeping him stuck here and weak.”
Dean’s eyebrows winged up to his hairline. “Hope?”
Sam shrugged. “It’s an injury to souls. I guess it makes sense.”
“His hope.”
“Mine.”
Dean frowned, thinking that through. “Your hope that we can win this.”
Sam shrugged, nodded.
“So, what? The wound makes him weak. It’s not healing because you hope we can win, so he needs to—break your hope?”
“He doesn’t know that’s why it’s not healing,” Sam clarified with a grim—not-smile. It didn’t feel like a smile. Like a baring of teeth, maybe. “Yet.”
Dean rocked back on his heels, folded his arms. “Great, so—kidnapping, torture.” Wordlessly, Sam nodded—what little he’d seen definitely confirmed both. “Awesome. You don’t have to go through with this, you know. We know what his plan is—we do know what his plan is, right?”
But Sam was shaking his head. “No, Dean, I do need to. Right now, he doesn’t know about the visions. And this is God we’re talking about. If he can’t use Eileen to get me now, when he knows we know, he’ll just do something else. Maybe involve Jody and the girls.”
“So we just don’t let on you can see the future.”
“Dean,” he said solemnly, forcing his brother to meet his gaze, “Eileen’s going to ask me to help her help a friend.” He hadn’t actually seen that part, but the way the woman had disappeared from the screen, Eileen’s determination—it fit. “I can’t just say ‘no, sorry.’”
Dean sighed out his frustration long and slow without looking at him. “I just don’t like it. We don’t have the spell yet. We don’t even know if Michael will help us.”
“Cas can be pretty convincing.”
“You’ve seen that?” Dean demanded skeptically. Sam hadn’t. He’d seen Castiel on the floor in a chokehold. He shrugged. Dean grimaced, no doubt hating that this plan hinged on Castiel. But Sam could believe in their friend for him until Dean got his head out of his ass. “Well,” his brother decided, “probably can’t hurt. He’s got the best chance of any of us making a connection, at least, what with being brothers.” He shot Sam another critical look. Apparently, Sam didn’t look much better than he had because he said, “Why don’t you go lay down. I’ll let you know if anything shakes out.”
Sam hesitated, but Castiel really was their best chance with Michael. And Sam wanted to see if he could see anything else about what was going to happen. He dipped his head. “Yeah, alright.”
Dean clapped his shoulder on the way out, and Sam eased to his feet.
*
Sam settled on his bed after cleaning the sick off the floor, put his back against the headboard. He could leave things where they stood. He knew the important part: that Chuck was stuck and they could go forward with their plan as long as Sam had hope.
But he didn’t know if Michael agreed to help them with the spell. If he didn’t, everything else would be pointless. He didn’t know if Dean got back up after Eileen clobbered him. If he didn’t, did Sam care what else happened? He didn’t know what Chuck would do to him to try to get him to lose hope. Torture, sure—but it probably wouldn’t be just that. Pain wouldn’t make him lose hope. Pain had to end eventually.
But what if what he saw changed things?
Twisting the hem of his shirt between his fingers, Sam glanced to the side—young Sam and Dean smiled at him from the hood of the Impala. They hadn’t known, then, that they’d watch each other die, that they’d lose almost everyone they loved, that they’d be pawns and playthings for demons, angels, and God.
I would want the choice, Patience had said. Was this what she’d been talking about? This choice—to see and maybe change things, possibly for the worse, or leave them alone and hope.
He needed to be able to hope.
He wanted to know.
He’d be better prepared to resist Chuck if he knew. This was too important—too many people’s lives depended on this—to mess up because he was blindsided.
With a nod to himself and a cleansing breath, Sam resettled into a more comfortable position. He’d barely reach out, What does Chuck do to me running through his mind, before—
—“You want to know what happens when you win?” Chuck staring down at him, smiling briefly with benevolence. “Here. I’ll show you.” Chuck clapping, and Sam’s sitting back in the Bunker, himself and Eileen sharing a table, Dean sleeping in an armchair.
“Hey, Dean,” vision Sam says. “If you’re tired, why don’t you go to bed.”
Dean sits up. “I’m not tired. I’m not tired. I’m just resting my eyes.” He rubs his eyes with his forefinger and thumb. “I’m good.”
Castiel enters with four beers, bringing them to the table.
“Ooh, jackpot.” Dean rubs his hands together. Castiel slides a beer to Eileen and Sam, and Dean gets up and grabs his own. “Thanks. Alright, well, I say let’s call it. Movie night?” He tilts his head back, drinks.
Eileen says, signing, “I’ll make popcorn.” Dean points at her and Sam laughs.
Sam’s cellphone rings. “Oh, Jody.” Sam answers the call, puts it on speaker. “Jody, hey. How’s it going?” Silence. “Jody?”
“Sam.” Jody says weakly.
“Yeah. Hey.”
“It was just supposed to be a little nest, maybe three vampires. Claire and I went in armed to the teeth, but there were more. So many more.” Her voice sounded hollow, faint. “She’s dead, Sam. Claire’s dead.”—
—Chuck dangling a pocket watch, chain wrapped over the back of his hand. “You just set it forward to any day or time, and you can see it all.”—
—“Come on, Sam. Don’t you want to see the future?”—
—Fires burning along the side of the road, five of them, ten, more. Sam watching them, blood across the bridge of his nose, leaking from a cut on his temple, Dean bleeding from a cut on his forehead, his expression set, eyes dead, gaze not deviating from the road.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he tells Sam. “But we did everything we could.”
“No, we didn’t.” Sam swinging around, but not quite looking at Dean. “We could’ve gone in there sooner.”
“The place was crawling with wolves. We had to wait.”
“And because we waited, the victims—they all died. They bled out on the floor.”—
—They’re winning, Sam. The monsters are winning.”—
—Sam loading weapons in the Bunker’s ready room, checking a magazine before sliding it home, picking up and sliding a knife from the sheath to check the blade.
“What’re you doing?” Dean asks, coming in from the hallway, looking tired. Sam turns and Dean’s gaze goes to the weapon in his hands, the bag on the table before him. “C’mon, man, we just got back.”
Sam turns back to the bag, the weapons. “If we don’t hustle,” Sam answers with forced pep, forced humor, desperate, “the nest’ll move on.”
Dean shakes his head, looks down. “No, Sam. It doesn’t matter.”
Sam huffs like that has to be a joke, turns back to his brother when he doesn’t laugh, too. “What are you saying?”
Dean stands where he is. “What I’ve been trying to say for months. It’s time,” Dean says with difficulty. “Time to stand down.”
“You want to quit?” Sam demands, and Dean looks away like that was the reaction he’s been expecting, dreading, too tired to deal with it. He shifts and turns like he might walk out, but doesn’t. “Hey, what’s happened to you, Dean? Ever since—”
“Ever since what?” Dean demands, suddenly angry. “We lost pretty much everyone we’ve ever cared about?” He moves closer to Sam. “Ever since the Mark made Cas go crazy? Ever since I had to bury him in a Ma’lak box? Ever since then? Yeah. You know why? ‘Cause the monsters—they’re everywhere. Everywhere! What we do—it’s not even hunting anymore. It’s whack-a-mole. We don’t even save people. Every friend we’ve ever had is either dead, or they got wise and they packed it in.”
“Jody’s still fighting. And Bobby—”
“Bobby has a death wish, and you know it. And Jody—ever since what happened to Donna and the girls, she does, too. And after Eileen. . . . “ Eileen’s name brings Sam’s head up. “So do you.”—
—What happened to Butch and Sundance? Dean, what happened to going out swinging?”
“We lost, brother. We lost. I’m done.”—
—Chuck standing next to Sam on the landing in the ready room, grim. “This is the truth, Sam. This is what comes next.”—
—Dean sitting at the table in the war room with a tumbler of whiskey, Sam entering with the weapons bag over his shoulder. “I’m raiding that nest with or without you.”
Dean exhales, deflates, picks up the whiskey and downs it, resigned. He clicks his tongue against his teeth and sets the tumbler back on the table with a click. “Then I guess I don’t have a choice, do I?” He levers out of the chair and precedes Sam from the room.—
—No. It can’t end like this.”
“See for yourself. You’re holding the watch.”—
—Sam and Dean inside a dirty, rundown, barricaded motel room. Baring their fangs, they snarl and hiss. The doorknob rattles. Sam moves next to the door. The door bursts open. Sam grabs the first hunter through it. Dean takes the second, grapples with him, throws him out of the window. Sam slits the other’s throat, drops him.
From the open doorway, Jody somersaults in, comes up ready, aiming, and fires. Sam jolts, freezing, surprise slacking his face.
Dean sees him and whirls to face Jody. He hisses before jumping on her, bearing her slight weight down to the bed. He covers her bodily and tips her head back, then rips out her throat, feeding and savaging while Sam drops to the floor, sick with dead man’s blood.
Bobby sees what Dean’s done, sees Sam down, and crosses the floor quickly, lifts the machete, and chops it cleanly through Sam’s neck—
—Chuck crouching in front of Sam in the casino, expression solemn, earnest. “Think about what I showed you. Look beyond the Mark. Beyond you and Dean fanging out—heartbreaking, but not the headline news.”
Sam, bound to the chair, searches his eyes, thinks back for the common thread, and gasps. “The monsters.”
“The monsters,” Chuck agrees grimly. “Without me, it’s a law of nature—dark forces prevail, monsters rule, and you and your brother, and everyone you love, will die. Can you really live with that?”—
The last vision vanished, leaving Sam blind with pain and reeling at the scope of the loss, the magnitude of the price they and their loved ones would pay by locking Chuck away.
Naturally, that was when Eileen knocked.
*
The taps were too soft to be Dean, too strident to be anything but urgent. Fragile as his head felt, ambivalent as he felt about what he’d seen, Sam knew what Eileen felt was real, that her fear for her friend was real, and that her need was real.
That was enough to get him off the bed, even if part of him wanted to play opossum.
He pulled the door open, and tried not to look like he’d been put through the ringer. “Hey.”
Eileen’s features weren’t as mobile as Dean’s, but that didn’t make her worry any harder to read. She said it with her hands—with how briskly she’d knocked and how concisely her hands moved through the signs—in the paleness of her face, and with how short her sentences were. “I was talking to a friend. She’s working a vamp case. She’s in trouble.”
Sam wished he could’ve seen that Castiel and Dean got the spell. He wished he’d gotten another chance to talk to Dean, to hear what he had to say about what Sam had seen, because he wasn’t sure where he stood, right now, if what he’d seen was enough to change his mind—if it would change Dean’s if he knew. He wished he could tell Eileen what was really going on.
Instead, he said, “Okay. Let’s go.” Grabbed his jacket, his phone in his pocket, and followed her.
*
Sam chanced calling Dean from the car. He sat in the passenger seat while Eileen drove. He really wished they hadn’t taken her car, because he could have done with a distraction right now. He glanced at Eileen as he put the phone to his ear, but her eyes were glued to the road, her face set in determination.
“Hey, man,” Dean greeted, interrupting the second ring. “Where are you?”
“Hey. Eileen needed help. Her friend’s in trouble, so we’re heading a couple towns over to look into it.”
A beat, while Dean processed what that meant, then an audible breath. “She say what her friend was hunting?”
“Vamps.” Considering what he knew they were heading into, and the way Chuck’s visions had ended for him and Dean, Sam figured vampire Dean’s warning was real enough—he just didn’t know what vampires it referred to.
“So, piece of cake, then,” Dean replied.
“Right.” Sam huffed a laugh, slid a glance at Eileen, and switched his phone to his left hand, so his hand could hide his mouth. “Hey, Dean, I need to ask you a question.”
He could just about picture Dean frowning as he settled against a table or wall somewhere in the Bunker and crossed one ankle over the other. “Shoot.”
He drew a careful breath, darted one more look at Eileen, then turned his head like he was looking out the window. “Say we do what we plan to do.”
“We will,” Dean assured.
“Right, but—what if locking God away makes things worse?”
“What’re you talking about, Sam? Is this about—you know?”
“Sort of. I mean, what if doing it lets the monsters just—I don’t know, multiply?”
“What? Because the balance is out of whack and the darkness is stronger? There wasn’t exactly a lack of monsters when Amara was locked away, remember. All the good won’t suddenly vanish just because Chuck takes a time out.”
“But doesn’t it worry you?” He shot another furtive look at Eileen, and this time Eileen glanced back. He lowered the phone so she could maybe read his lips. “Problems with Michael.”
Her mouth opened in an O of understanding, and she turned back to the road in time for Sam to hear, “Why don’t you tell me what’s really bothering you?”
“Just—what if we do this and the monsters take over? Everyone we know dies. Everyone dies.”
“Sam, everyone dies, anyway.” He opened his mouth to protest, but Dean spoke over him. “No, listen to me. Chuck’s going to kill everyone, anyway. ‘Welcome to the end,’ remember? So, the way I see it, we can either let Chuck get his way, or we can take him out of the equation and take our chances. Personally, I prefer option number two. At least then, we’re going out on our terms, no one else pulling the strings, and we all have a chance. You with me, man?”
“Yeah,” Sam agreed. Just them and the monsters. “Yeah, I’m with you.” Was that the choice Patience had been talking about?
“Good. Alright, see you soon.”
“Yeah.”
*
Eileen wound slowly through the four-level garage, looking for where Sue Burresh had told her she was while Sam kept an eye on their surroundings. It looked like a pretty standard hunter meeting place—no security cameras, multiple exits, free, quiet. Which were also ideal conditions for kidnapping, Sam noted, with a built-in car dump site to delay discovery.
“There,” Eileen murmured.
Sam followed her gaze, but he probably could’ve picked out the vehicle by sight. It was a truck, older model, blue and white, parked alone in the corner, nothing visible in the bed, no one visible in the cab, door left open.
Eileen put the car in park, not bothering with a parking space, and they exchanged a look before climbing out. Sam tried not to think about traps, but the abandoned car, the lack of any visible people, vampire or otherwise, no signs of struggle, tickled his instincts, raising alarm flags. Would have done even without forewarning.
He shined the flashlight over the vehicle’s interior, along the front fender. If vampires had attacked a hunter at her vehicle, he would’ve expected to see signs of a struggle—blood, maybe, a dented fender, spent shell casings, something. He turned to Eileen. “She said she saw vampires here?”
Eileen nodded.
“It looks empty.” And not just no-one-here-at-the-moment empty, either.
“Look again,” an unfamiliar female voice said, stepping out from behind a pillar, an open stairway spilling light into the garage visible past her shoulder. That door hadn’t been open when they’d pulled up, and he hadn’t heard it open.
Eileen wouldn’t have been able to hear it. Relief lit her face. “Sue. You’re okay,” she said, closing some of the distance between them. “Thank God.”
A moment later, Chuck stood in her place, grinning smugly, having—he didn’t even know. Poofed Sue out of existence? He extended a hand, dismissing that what he’d done was any big thing. “Any time.”
Eileen stopped short. Sam moved closer to her. He wasn’t sure what he could do, what either of them could do, but he knew he couldn’t let her face it alone.
Then Chuck looked straight at him. “Hi, Sam. I think it’s time you and I had a little chat.”
A laugh strangled in his throat. “We don’t have anything to talk about.”
“Oh, I think we do.” Chuck smiled genially as he raised a hand, his eyes hard, and snapped.
*
Sam found himself in the car. In the Impala, not Eileen’s car, blacktop scrolling past beneath the glare of the high-beams. He started, knocking his knee into the dash and accidentally pulling the wheel hard left—but the car never wavered, didn’t veer or drift, just kept on cruising centered right between the lines.
“This isn’t real.” He slid his hands over the steering wheel, looking for a flaw, but it felt just like he remembered. The seat, too, felt molded to fit Dean.
When he turned to the right, there was Eileen, watching the road as if nothing unusual had happened. When she glanced over and found him watching her, she smiled. “What?”
“Nothing.”
The road kept rolling, nothing on the horizon, nothing passing by, nothing in the rearview, nothing—just trees and darkness and open spaces.
Then Dean was there, in the rearview mirror.
“She’s not real, either, you know,” Dean told him.
Sam jammed his knee, cursed, and flung around to face Dean. He was wearing black, with a black and purple plaid overshirt Sam recognized, and sat with a careless ease Sam hadn’t seen in—he couldn’t remember. “Dean.”
“Hi, Sammy.”
“What are you doing here?” When he turned to check with Eileen, the passenger seat was empty. The car kept driving. “What?”
“Told you she wasn’t real.”
“Then you’re not real, either.”
“No, I’m real,” Dean assured. He shifted back, hooking his elbow over the back seat and letting his hand dangle. His eyes were bright, almost happy.
None of this made sense, unless—“Am I dead?”
“Nope. But I am. And before you freak out,” Dean said, correctly predicting Sam’s next reaction, “I’m also not your Dean. Not current Dean, anyway. Current Dean, your Dean, is still back at the Bunker with Cas and Michael, probably getting ready to head into Purgatory about now. Little hard to tell, time being relative here, and all.”
“Purgatory,” he checked.
“Mm-hm. Off to get the last ingredient for the spell you need to lock Chuck away.”
“And you’re here because?”
“Apparently, you really wanted to talk.”
“How?”
A beat, where Dean looked expectant and Sam waited expectantly, then he raised an eyebrow with a smirk. “Well, we push air from our lungs through our mouth, causing vibrations in our cords that produce sound that we shape—”
“No-not not how—” Sam stuttered. He pushed air through his nose when Dean’s smirk widened. The jerk knew full well what Sam had been asking. “How are you here?”
The smirk dropped away. Dean shrugged. “You, I guess.”
“Me?”
“Yeah?”
“How?”
“Man, I don’t know,” Dean answered, laughter hidden in his voice. “You’re the one with the mystical God-mojo.”
“The what?” God mojo? That couldn’t possibly be what it sounded like, could it? No way he could snap and, like, erase someone from existence. He felt a little sick.
“Look, Sammy, I don’t know how it works. I just know you—called, or whatever, and here I am. Bet Death’s gonna have something to say about that. Now, can we talk about whatever you wanted to talk about and save this mystical bullshit for when I’m deader?”
Sam didn’t have any idea what deader would look like and didn’t want to. He honestly felt more than just a little freaked by the God-thing, so something simple sounded perfect. “Um. What did I want to talk about?”
Dean raised two judgmental eyebrows at that.
“What?” Sam demanded defensively, scowling. “It’s not like I knew I could do—whatever.” He waved a hand at nothing, like he could wave away the idea. “I don’t even know where we are.”
Assuming Dean was even real. That didn’t feel like a safe assumption.
“Don’t you?” Dean turned his head, ducking to peer out the nearest window at the passing clumps of trees barely distinguishable from the dark sky in the dark. “Gotta say, I was expecting your head to be a little bit more exciting.”
This was the inside of his head? He twisted further against the seat to be able to peer out the driver’s side window without losing Dean from his periphery.
“Granted, it’s your unconscious mind. Can’t expect that to be too active, I guess. Actually, it kinda looks like heaven, minus the douchey angels.”
Speaking of things he didn’t want to talk about. . . . Sam cleared his throat.
Dean immediately looked over with interest. “Figured out what you wanted to talk about?”
He didn’t know what to say.
“Nothing? Really? That doesn’t sound like the Sammy I know. Knew? Whatever. Point is, something’s gotta be bothering you. C’mon, spill! Frist thing that pops into your overly haired head.”
“The visions,” he said. He hadn’t realized if after he’d seen them, the horror too immediate, but having spoken to Dean and in the quiet of his mind, with an unconcerned Dean (even a dead one from the future) prodding at him, it niggled at him. “Everyone only ever told me what happened. I never saw it. I mean, I know Claire died because Jody called and told us.”
“Right.”
“And I only know what happened to Cas, or Donna, the girls, Eileen—because you told me. Because you wanted me to stop fighting. To give up like you had.”
“That doesn’t sound like me.”
“Right. But Chuck said he couldn’t see us. So why were all the visions of the future where we locked him away about us? And not us fighting and losing, but hearing about it. Why didn’t he show me Jody and Claire fighting a huge nest and getting overwhelmed? Why didn’t he show me Donna and the girls dying? Why didn’t he show me Eileen?
“Unless he couldn’t. And if he couldn’t, that means, either he can’t see what happens and he’s making it up, or he knows that’s not how things go and he just wants me to think that’s what happens. What if—”
When he looked up, Dean’s smile was pure fond indulgence. The expression wasn’t particularly wrong, but something about it smothered the words in Sam’s throat.
“I knew you’d see it, given the chance.”
His hands slid blindly along the seat hinge, searching for a weapon he knew wasn’t there. “You’re not mt brother.”
“No,” Dean agreed. “Not anymore. He had somewhere else he needed to be.”
“What are you talking about?” He wished he wasn’t at such a disadvantage, twisted into a pretzel in the front seat, space limited. “Who are you?”
He expected Chuck. Part of him definitely expected Chuck. Instead, Dean’s pale skin and familiar features melted into sharp female features, dark hair, and dark clothes under a black leather trench. Sam instinctively tried to scramble back, but he had nowhere to go.
“Hi, Sam,” the familiar, husky drawled.
“Billie. What are you doing here?” And then, because it made the most sense. “Am I dead?”
Billie didn’t smile. She never did, at them, not really. But there was something like amusement in her eyes, if a being could be amused by something it was contemplating squashing. “No,” she answered. “You are not dead. Yet. If you’re interested in staying not dead, I have some information for you.”
“You—” He thought he deserved the mental double-take, after everything. “You’re helping us?”
She inclined her head.
“Why?”
“I have my reasons. Are you going to listen?”
“Uh, yes. Yes, I’m listening.” He straightened his spine as if to prove it.
“Good. Now, this next bit has a few different endings. In some of them, you die. In some, you don’t. In some, everyone else dies. Which one you get depends on you. If you decide to lock God in the cage—”
“If?” he interrupted.
“Yes,” she confirmed darkly. “If. If you decide to lock God up, you’re going to want to remember that the spell requires a tremendous amount of power. Normally, you wouldn’t have access to that power, but these are unusual circumstances. Now, assuming you get all your ducks in a row and manage to get to the main event, and assuming you decide to go through with it, here’s what you have to do to survive it.”
*
When Sam woke, he was sitting with his arms zip-tied to the arms of the chair, Eileen trussed up across from him, looking miserable and apologetic, with Chuck standing at her shoulder, smug and insufferable.
“Hi, Sam,” he greeted, darkly cheerful.
It was remarkably easy to stick to the script.
*
“Sam!” Castiel called moments after Sam cut the second zip-tie holding his wrist. He held up a mud-colored orb about the size of a croquet ball for Sam to see, then rolled it across the floor to Sam’s feet. Sam bent, disoriented enough he almost take a header when the blood rushed to his head, but he scooped the orb into his hands.
It was cool to touch, but warm where it sat in his palm, humming with energy. Sam could feel the strands that would weave together to craft the cage that would bind Chuck from this world. All he had to do was smash it.
Smash it and lock Chuck up, free the world to be whatever it would be without God. Save the lives of everyone on the planet, or doom them?
Sam stumbled to his feet, feeling wild and unsettled as Dean yelled—“Sam, smash it! Now!”—no doubt, even bitch-slapped by God, that locking Chuck away was the correct path, no doubt that Sam would do the right thing. And then there was Castiel, crouched near the slot machines and out of the line of fire, keeping Eileen down and out of the fight. Safe. He’d worked so hard to get them here.
Sam could disappoint them both in two words, damn the world in two words, or save it. He thought of Jody’s voice when she called to tell them Claire was dead, remembered the deadness in her eyes when she’s somersaulted through a motel room door to get the drop on Sam, put a bullet through his heart. He remembered the heartbreak in Dean’s voice, hidden beneath the anger, the despair, when he’d recited the litany of their dead.
And he remembered what Billie told him.
“If you want this spell to work,” she’d told him, “it’s not enough just to smash it. You have to believe, Sam. You have to believe more deeply than you’ve ever believed before, because if you don’t—if you don’t commit one hundred percent of your energy, if you don’t use every resource at your disposal, you’re going to die. And, depending on how badly you fuck it up, you just might take Dean and Castiel with you.”
“How?” he’d asked.
“Secret of the universe,” she’d said, and smirked. “Bottom line? You’re connected to Dean because you’re soulmates. Dean’s connected to Castiel. Bonds forged in hell, you might say. And for however long you can hold out, you’re connected to God. Which, for better or worse, gives you access to power you’ve never dreamed of. So, when you cast that spell—if you cast that spell—you need to reach out along those connections—any connection you have, every connection you have—and draw that energy into the spell. Channel it, and don’t stop until the spell is complete. You understand?”
“And if I don’t?”
“Well. Best case scenario, nothing happens. Except God regains his full power. Worst case, you and everyone you’ve touched dies.” The possibility sucked the air from his lungs. “Could go either way. Or, it could just kill you. No way to know until the cookie crumbles.”
Chuck turned to face Sam, leaving Dean on the floor at his feet, no sign of uncertainty on his face. He didn’t even try to take the orb, just watched Sam like he knew him, like the ending had been decided and he was just waiting for Sam to catch up and make the decision he knew he would. Because Sam was a good guy. Because Chuck had nudged and helped and blinked people out of existence at his whim just to get his way, because he couldn’t watch his favorite story.
Sam’s gaze slid past him to Dean. “Promise you’ll never give up?”
“You and me,” Dean confirmed, “no matter what.”
Sam closed his eyes. He closed his eyes and focused on the core of energy Billie had helped him find, drew it into his own meagre strength, still star-bright, and focused so that it grew and expanded, focused past the bounds of his own energy to connect with Dean’s, with Castiel’s, with Jody’s and Donna’s and every other link he could find, until it seemed like his mind’s eye was lit up like a Christmas tree. Then he held the words Billie had given him in his mind, wrapped them in the power he’d called, and threw the orb at Chuck’s feet.
It shattered, throwing brown and purple mist in a swirl that wound around Chuck’s legs like excited dogs.
“No!” Chuck yelled, voice deep with the fury of an angry god. Sam felt, rather than saw, Chuck start forward, hand outstretched to reach Sam, to throw him, to spite him—to end this, but the orb’s energy stopped him, wrapping around his legs, then up over his shoulders, down around his waist, over his head, around his arms. It swirled faster and faster, tighter and tighter, pulled and bucked like a herd of rampaging broncos desperate to be free.
Sam locked his will around the spell, the power, sank his fingernails deep into the well of it he drew from Chuck, and pulled harder, faster, on the power at his command. He forced the spell into place with gritted teeth and locked muscles, with breath and blood and every beat of his heart, with the love of his brother and their friends, with the hope, desperate and all consuming, that this wouldn’t be a mistake, that they could build a new life out of the shadow of Chuck’s manipulations, that he and Dean and Castiel, Jody and Donna and the girls, and Eileen could cheat fate just one more time and live.
Most of all, he hoped they would live.
He held on when it felt like he couldn’t, he hoped when it felt like the well had run dry, he watched, through slitted, watery eyes, the sphere that grew and expanded where Chuck had been, until the last of the energy had coiled around Chuck, until the light grew so bright he had to close his eyes and shield his face, until the heat from the spell felt like it had scoured the skin and muscles from his bones, until every last ounce of energy was gone.
And then he dropped, and the others dropped with him.
*
Darkness.
*
Sam had been standing at the kitchen counter, staring at the eggs he’d pulled from the refrigerator for untold minutes, when he felt someone else phase into existence behind him. He didn’t need to turn to know it was Billie. Death had a distinct feel, different from anything else in the universe. But he did.
Billie studied him, stalking closer with the grace of a giant cat. “Looks like none of you are dead,” she observed dispassionately.
He cleared his throat. “Looks like.” If he reached out, he could still find the spark of Jody’s life-force burning in Sioux Falls, could find Donna and Claire and Alex, all of their friends scattered around the country. He always knew where Dean and Castiel were, felt them moving around the Bunker with barely a thought.
It was overwhelming.
“How long is this going to last?” he asked, hand drifting up to the shoulder wound that hadn’t disappeared when Chuck had. It didn’t feel like anything when he touched it, but a hum of power lingered, muddy brown and purple.
“As long as it lasts.”
“As long as I live?”
Billie’s eyes narrowed, shrewd, a savage kind of humor lighting them. “Perhaps.”
Sam huffed a breath, not quite able to summon laughter. It’d been five days since Eileen had shaken him, Dean, and Castiel awake after Sam had cast the spell. It’d been three days since Sam and Dean had returned to the casino, surprised to find it still empty, the bodies and everything exactly where Chuck had left them, to erase the security feed.
Sam crossed his arms over his chest, leaned back against the counter. “So, what happens now?”
“Now? You live.”
“That’s it?” He felt Dean enter the kitchen behind Billie, knew Billie had noticed him, too.
“If you can,” she told him.
“Well, aren’t you cheery,” Dean interjected. He met Billie’s chill gaze squarely, daring her to try something because Dean had never met an authority figure he didn’t want to challenge.
“Hello, Dean.”
“So, the spell worked?”
Sam didn’t think Billie was going to answer, but she raised a perfectly plucked brow. “God’s gone. You’re not. I’d say it worked.”
“And it’s going to hold?”
An actual smile curved her lips, small, reluctantly pleased. It sent a chill down Sam’s spine. “Now, that’s an interesting question.”
Dean raised an eyebrow back. “And the answer?”
“Nothing lasts forever. Not the work of God. Certainly not the work of men.”
“How long do we have?” Sam asked.
She turned a level stare on him, didn’t answer. He hadn’t expected her to. “I’ll be seeing you, boys,” she called over her shoulder and turned, vanishing in a swirl of black leather trench.
Dean studied the place she’d been when pursed lips. He tossed a glance at Sam. “I think we’re growing on her.”
“Yeah.” He laughed. “You keep telling yourself that.” He turned back to the counter, to the carton of eggs he couldn’t remember why he’d gotten them out. He frowned. “Hey, Dean?”
“Yeah?” Dean reached around him for the eggs, got a large bowl out of the cabinet, and started breaking eggs into it.
“Do you think things will ever go back to normal?”
“When have things ever been normal for us?”
Sam huffed a laugh.
“We’ll figure it out,” Dean promised. “We always do.”