The Omnipotence Paradox, for wetsammywinchester
Title: The Omnipotence Paradox
Recipient: wetsammywinchester
Rating: PG-13
Word Count or Media: ~7000 words
Warnings: temporary major and minor character deaths, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it suicidal ideation. The fourth wall gets lightly kicked a couple times.
Author's Notes: Dear wetsammywinchester, I hope this story is to your liking! I chose the “Soulless Jack keeps bringing Sam and Dean, his humans, back to life (even when he’s the one who kills them)” prompt. And a big thank you to M. for the last-minute beta!
Summary: Soulless Jack is a capricious God. Sam has something to say about that.
Sam Winchester has a favorite kind of pen. Dime-a-dozen black ballpoints, the kind you can pick up in every town. Even when you’re stuck in Nowhere, USA, you can find a pen like this. The ink cartridge is safely tucked in a transparent plastic body and capped with black on both sides. An unscrewing cap to change the cartridge on the bottom and a cap with a flap to tuck the pen safely into your pocket on the top. There are often teeth marks on the bottom end. Sam scolds himself for chewing his pens, but can’t stop the nervous habit. After all, Sam has many things to be nervous about.
Sam grows attached to these pens because they’re cheap. He can buy a bunch even with his meager allowance and keep his school notes looking consistent. If Dean found out, he would say Sam needs to keep his OCD in check and that it didn’t matter if your notes all had the same ink or not. But there aren't many things Sam can control in his life. He doesn't get to decide whether he goes or stays. He doesn't get to decide whether he wants to hunt or not. And when he gets older, there are many things like possession and pain and death Sam has no say over either.
But he can choose the pens he takes his notes with.
They don't look like much, but you shouldn’t be fooled by their humble appearance. It doesn’t take a Parker pen to jot down a poem or to sign a death sentence or to write down the calculations that will eventually lead to curing cancer. And Sam's ballpoint pens are quite like their owner: unassuming and easily overlooked, but holding phenomenal power behind them.
One only needs to know how to apply it.
-
Sam comes to a halt between two graves.
Jack stands under a willow tree, completely still like he’s just another statue on a headstone. Castiel’s crumpled body lies near his feet. Dean is also lying in the grass, a little to the right of Sam, glassy eyes staring into the sky and arms sprawled wide like he’s ready for an embrace. The great Equalizer gun is still clutched in Dean’s dead fingers. Sam knows he didn’t shoot. The jury is still out on whether he wouldn’t or couldn’t.
“This isn’t what I had planned,” Chuck says from behind Sam somewhere.
“What did you have planned?” Sam asks, voice as steady as it could be, considering Dean and Castiel died five minutes ago and Jack’s gone nuclear and he’s the last man standing. All things considered, he’s keeping it together pretty well.
“You know, Abraham and Isaac, Moriah, the whole nine!” Chuck gestures. “I suppose Dean couldn’t kill Jack. Same as your father couldn’t kill you, Sam. He passed the buck on to Dean… who didn’t do it, either.” Chuck sighs. “I’ve been writing for so, so long. It’s hard not to repeat myself.”
He takes a step forward and adjusts his little maroon jacket. He looks very Godlike.
“It all happened before. And it all will happen again. There’s nothing new under this moon.” Chuck sounds tired. “I’m tired of this whole subplot. It’s getting unwieldy. And I like Jack’s character, I do, but you have to kill your darlings sometimes.”
He snaps his fingers. Jack’s eyes and mouth flash white, and he arches as Chuck smites him. But the glow quickly fizzles out, and Jack shakes the light off like a wet dog, the sparks landing in the grass.
“No!” he screams, a petulant child, and reaches forward with his hand. Jack grabs Chuck with his power and shakes him like a ragdoll. “No, no, no!”
He tosses Chuck aside, right into a gravestone. Chuck makes a pained noise and rolls over onto his back. A glow envelops Jack’s skin.
“I’m God now,” he says. Sam has the worst of deja vus, Castiel overrun by the Leviathans and making the same proclamation. That’s what Chuck said, right? It all happened before and it all will happen again.
Except this isn’t going according to Chuck’s plan. So maybe this is something new.
Chuck sits up and snaps his fingers over and over again, but nothing happens. Not a rustle of wind, not a fluttering of wings of a bird overhead, nothing.
“I’m God,” Jack insists. Sam grabs the gun and shoots Jack, point-blank. Jack jerks away and it gets his shoulder, not his center mass Sam’s been aiming for. Everyone’s gone, he could’ve at least have taken down the new soulless deity on his way down.
Sam’s shoulder echoes with pain, and he collapses in the grass, right next to Dean’s dead body. He pulls Dean close in a Pieta facsimile.
This is the parking lot where a mugging went bad. This is the Mystery Spot, the owner shaking with a shotgun in his hand. This the floor of a suburban house full of Hellhounds, their invisible claws leaving behind bloody gashes as they claim a damned soul. This is a grimy street under a bridge, Dean bleeding out in his arms with a Mark on his own.
It all happened before and it will happen again. This universe has certain rules and patterns it likes to adhere to.
“Why did you do this?” Jack whines. “You hurt me!”
“You killed Dean,” Sam says. If Jack knows them at all, he knows that “because of my brother” is the biggest trump card in the Winchester family. It’s the biggest excuse and explanation and justification of all. It’s my brother. I have a right to shoot to kill now, see? That’s what brotherhood looks like.
“You should’ve just said that.” Jack pouts. He snaps his fingers and Dean’s breathing. Again. “I’ve got some stuff to do, but I’ll see you guys later, okay? Awesome!”
Sam pulls Dean closer, and it takes Dean an unusually long time to say “Hey, man, I’m fine, geddoff!” which means Dean is really out of it.
“I was wrong. My casting was wrong. You’re Abraham,” Chuck says. Sam glares at him as he kneels to pick up Castiel’s body.
Dean picks up the gun.
Chuck snaps his fingers in alarm. Nothing happens.
“He was manipulating us, Dean. All along. All these years, everything we’ve ever been through, it’s been for his amusement,” Sam says, just on that side of bitter and spiteful that he’s not exactly proud of. He likes to think of himself as someone who gives people second chances. Chuck’s literally God, though. Sam prayed to him so many times. Sam begged him to help.
And Chuck thought, how fun! and piled on some more troubles just to watch Sam squirm. So Sam doesn’t have it in him to feel bad about Dean punching Chuck square in the face.
“I suppose I deserved that,” Chuck mumbles, cradling his cheek in his hand.
“Think you deserve another one?” Dean snarls.
“Stop,” Sam says, voice weak.
Dean drops his hand to the side and exhales.
-
Turns out, it’s opposite day: God’s not God anymore. Chuck’s batteries aren’t just drained. They’re removed.
“Jack’s got your juice?” Dean asks. “Heh. Jack got your juice. Say that ten times fast.” They’re back at the bunker. Chuck sulks in one of the chairs in a way that’s absolutely unbecoming to a deity. Sam’s wound has been inspected and bandaged by Dean. Chuck notes he doesn’t know anything about non-lethal wounds caused by his gun which causes Dean to go on a tirade about Chuck’s uselessness. Even now, he’s side-eyeing Chuck. “How does that even happen? You’re God. The Maker.”
“See, there’s this paradox. Omnipotence paradox, to be exact,” Chuck says, leaning back in the chair. Sam is familiar with it, but he’s never heard it explained by an omnipotent being before, and he’ll take all the opportunities to learn that he can get. “Can an omnipotent being make something more powerful than him?”
“Right. If he can’t, he’s not all-powerful,” Dean says. He’s already got a beer uncapped because this is what you do when you find out that your quasi-child became God. You have drinks. That’s Dean’s answer to all questions of the universe, his own personal 42. “And if he can, then he made something he can’t touch. So he’s not all-powerful again.”
“Precisely. I wanted Jack to be a big deal so he’d pose an actual threat. You kept knocking everything I tossed at you right out of the park. I had to up the stakes. So I poured and poured power into him… I guess I poured too much.”
“So what do we do now?” Dean leans in close to Chuck, face distorted in a scowl.
“We? Oh, no. No, no. I’m not a part of this.”
“You’re God! You can’t just check out.”
“I’m not God, not anymore.” Chuck stands up. “Good luck with saving the world. I’m going to take this opportunity to retire. Go live in a lighthouse, drink port, and write all day. Being God was fun and all, but lately, I’ve been in a rut. I feel like I’ve written everything I possibly could’ve about you guys!”
“Right. Everything has already happened before,” Sam mumbles.
“Bingo. I mean, I stooped to so many storyline rehashes. Yowza. And, ugh, the supporting cast decline? Ketch and Mick were fun, but they’re no Ellen and Jo and Ash. Maybe I shouldn’t have...” Chuck takes one look at Dean’s face and clears his throat. He hastily turns around and starts walking up the bunker’s stairs. “Anyway, I must bid you adieu.”
“Wait!” Sam calls after him. “Are you actually not going to do anything?!”
“Sorry,” Chuck says. He opens the door and grunts. “I’ll give you your first hint, though. Look outside.”
They clamber up the stairs, getting in each other’s way until they finally look outside. It’s mid-day, but the sky is blooming with different colors, a year’s worth of sunsets blended into one. Purples bleeding into blues and into reds, pale yellows swirling around them and bursting into oranges. It’s a regular Pollock, someone tossing paint on a canvas from a respectable distance and watching it swirl and mix and drip.
“I suppose he thinks he’s improving on my blueprints.” Chuck scoffs. “I chose blue skies for a reason. In fact, I painted them this shade when I saw that the light was good. Those were simpler times.” He sighs. “Whatever. Get him. Do what you do every evening, Pinky and the Brain. Try to save the world.”
“We don’t take orders from you,” Dean snaps. “Not anymore.”
“Is it really an order,” Chuck asks with a faint, Godlike smile, “when it’s something you would’ve done anyway?”
-
The world got a new God on Thursday. On Friday, Dean chops wood and Sam makes a pyre for Castiel. They say a few words and have a few drinks. There’s not much to say. They held a pyre for Castiel and Mary a year ago. They held another pyre for Mary a few months ago. It’s getting harder and harder to give original eulogies. Sam can almost understand Chuck who grew bored with the two of them.
On Saturday, they hit the books. But there’s nothing in them about how to kill God. Chuck wouldn’t have included an Achilles’ heel for himself in their lore books. If there was a failsafe Chuck knew how to set off, he would’ve told them. He might be an asshole and a bastard and many other expletives, but he seemed to hate what Jack was doing with the place.
No, there isn't anything in the books. And Sam loves books, so it’s killing him to admit it. But if they want to do this, they’ll have to think outside of the box.
On Sunday, nothing happens. Nothing of importance, that is. Dean buys groceries since you need to eat even when your kinda-sorta son takes over the world. Dean makes them a nice meal: burgers and fries. They eat in silence. Sam takes care of his garden after dinner. He’s been growing herbs and veggies in it, but he hasn’t had the time to give it the love it deserves, so it’s a touch sad-looking.
So is Sam. He’s heard that plants can pick up on their gardener’s mood. If that’s true, these plants are reflecting him fairly. They don’t deserve to be saddled with Sam’s sadness, but that’s all Sam has to offer.
On Monday, the weather gets stormy. Localized hail rains specifically on the town of Lawrence. That’s odd enough for late April in Kansas, but what makes it even weirder is that the hail tastes like ice cream. The meteorologists are baffled. Sam and Dean are not. Jack is God now, and ice cream hail makes sense in Jack’s Bizzaro World.
Dean suggests going outside and opening their mouths wide to catch as much ice cream hail as they can. Sam laughs because that’s what you do when your brother makes bad jokes and it’s the end of the world o’clock.
There’s a flurry of an ice cream snowstorm that night, with beautiful white slopes that taste and smell like crème brûlée. The city of Kansas sends out snowplows, but by the time they get ready to clean Lawrence up, the ice cream is gone.
On Tuesday morning, the trees and flowers get tall. Real tall. Redwood-tall. A giant strawberry lands in front of the bunker’s door, taller than even Sam’s height. The trees all shot up in an overnight growth spurt.
Sam chokes on a piece of salad during dinner. Dean tries to perform the Heimlich maneuver, but the leaf is lodged snugly in Sam’s throat. Sam suffocates at 14:17 on a Tuesday. (John ingrained the use of military time in them when they were young, and it's been a habit ever since.)
Sam doesn’t like Tuesdays much. This doesn’t help.
Jack appears in the Bunker’s kitchen six minutes, three seconds later. Later, Sam will figure Dean was already on the bargaining stage of grief, so he must’ve been almost happy to see Jack arrive. At the moment, Sam isn’t figuring anything out, since he’s busy being dead and slumping against the kitchen wall. You’ll have to excuse him for that.
“Oh no,” Jack says. “Sam, you can’t do that. You have to wake up.”
He slaps Sam’s cheeks like he must’ve seen the brothers do to each other when one of them has been knocked unconscious. Since Jack is God, Sam rouses from his eternal sleep at the first touch of Jack’s fingers. He coughs and spits the leaf out onto the kitchen floor. Drool dribbles out of the corner of his mouth.
“I saved him,” Jack says. “See, everything is good, right? We can be friends again?”
“Yeah, you saved him,” Dean says, and narrows his eyes into a suspicious squint as he helps Sam back to his feet. “Somehow, for thirty-odd years he managed never to kick it that stupidly, and the second you become God, he happens to choke on some salad?”
Jack huffs but doesn’t say anything.
“I see straight through your one-man good cop bad cop routine, buddy,” Dean says. Dean’s not scared of a thing. Never has been. Schoolyard bullies and omnipotent gods, Dean will stare them down and tell them to get bent.
“I just want to be friends again.” Jack looks away. “But I guess I have to win you over. You always liked me less. But Sam, you still like me, right?”
“Jack,” Sam says, keeping his voice soft. Or trying to. He just choked to death on a leafy green, after all. “Please… come home. We can discuss this and we can help you. Everything will be okay. You don’t have to be God. We want you here anyway.”
Jack gulps, eyes darting from Sam’s face to Dean’s. “I don’t believe you. You tried to lock me up in a box. Even though I killed Lucifer! For all you. You don’t understand. I’m trying to keep you safe.” He paces the floor. “I’m trying to make the world better. For you! Someday you’ll appreciate this. I promise.”
Jack vanishes.
“Man, I fucking told you,” Dean says to the emptiness of the kitchen, “healthy food kills.”
Sam laughs hysterically. His shoulder wound aches in tune with his ribcage convulsing with a laughing fit.
-
On Wednesday, the road in front of the bunker becomes a winding river, with clear water and plenty of fish. Jack’s waiting for them, perched on a rock, his sneaker-clad feet dangling above the water’s glossy surface.
“Remember when you took me fishing, Dean?” he asks, beaming. “We were friends then. Here.” He makes three fishing rods come into being. One second they aren’t there, the next they are. Dean picks up one of the fishing rods.
“What if we don’t play?” he asks.
“You should.” Jack glares. An invisible force clotheslines Dean where he stands. If Sam wasn’t so freaked, he’d have a nice little chortle about how ridiculously Dean toppled over. Instead, he gives Dean a long pleading glance, wordlessly asking him to humor Jack.
“Maybe I should make the river a river of beer!” Jack says excitedly once they’re sitting down. “Would you like that? You like beer a lot, Dean.”
“You should make things like they were, kiddo,” Dean says. “That world worked just fine.”
“No, it didn’t! It didn’t. That world sucked.” Jack huffs. “In my new world, everyone will be happy and safe all the time. No more scary things. No more losing anyone you love. We’ll have… fishing and snacks and friends all day long.”
“Jack…” Sam says. A fish tugs on his bait, but he doesn’t reel it in. “The world isn’t supposed to be like that.”
“Who says?” Jack frowns. “Maybe it’s Chuck who was wrong, and I’m making the world better!”
He picks one of the fish up. “Will you teach me how to gut a fish, Dean?” A mean-looking knife appears in Dean’s lap. Not the most subtle of threats.
“Yeah,” Dean says after a beat. He’s good with that stuff.
“Remember,” Jack says as Dean works on slicing a fish open, “remember when I was just born and you wanted to gut me like a fish?”
“I-I never said that.”
“But you thought it,” Jack says, and Dean takes in a breath and doesn’t breathe out. A deep gash travels up his clothes, and Sam’s having deja vu again-
Everything happened before, especially Dean dying. That has happened over a hundred times on one single Tuesday alone. And later, on some other days of the week as well.
“Stop it!” Sam screams, grabbing Jack by the shoulders. “Jack. Leave him alone.”
“He was mean to me. All I wanted… all I wanted was for somebody to understand me,” Jack says sadly.
“I know. I know! I was there, remember? I listened. And Dean, he cares about you too now, so stop. Please.”
Jack sighs and makes Dean whole again. Dean wheezes, sucking air into his restored lungs.
“I don’t think I like fishing anymore,” Jack says. He turns to his pile of fish and brings them to life one by one before releasing them back into the deep waters. “It’s stupid.”
-
On Thursday, the sky rains red strawberry jelly. Dean puts a bucket outside.
“It could be poisonous,” Sam says as Dean puts the bucket on the kitchen table.
“Life’s too short to worry about that,” Dean says ominously as he picks out a large spoon to dig in. “And Jack won’t let it stick.”
“No,” Sam says. Tries not to think about another being that promised him he’ll never die, not even if he really wanted to.
Well, actually, two beings. Both Lucifer and Dean promised him that. In very different ways.
Sam tries to think of one and not the other. Then he tries to think of neither. Sam’s forayed into meditation a few times, but it didn't do much for him. He never could make his brain a clean slate. Too scared to let go.
His shoulder wound aches and squirms. It’s not a regular wound. It feels alive. Later that night, Sam takes off his shirt in front of the mirror in his room. He watches the wound swirl like a little whirlpool of flesh and prods it with his index finger.
Sam sits down at his desk and writes down his observations in a black ballpoint pen. He chews on the bottom end too, just a little.
-
On Friday, Mary Winchester walks into the bunker.
Sam knows she’s come back wrong the second he sees her baking homemade pies in the kitchen. Jack is trying to impress Dean, as much as he resents the man. It’s the father paradox. Sam is all too familiar with that one himself.
Fake Mary pats Sam’s cheek, and her hands are nowhere near soft enough for the real thing. She keeps pulling pie after pie out of the oven even though it would never fit that many. Not-Mary doesn’t rest until every single surface of the bunker’s kitchen is covered in pies. Apple, cherry, pecan, take your pick.
When Sam and Dean don’t immediately warm up to her, Jack dissolves her mid-sentence in frustration.
-
On Saturday, Dean yells at Jack, letting him have it for killing Mary and then taunting them with a mirage. Jack snaps Dean’s neck and rebuilds him anew with all the curiosity of a kid pulling wings off a fly. He does it over and over again in the bunker’s library as Sam pleads, begs, and watches. Watches Dean jerk to the tune of Jack’s finger-snaps. The opening scene of West Side Story gone very bad, Sam's panicked brain thinks incredulously.
On that same Saturday, Sam squares his shoulders and says “no” with all the confidence he has. And suddenly Jack’s snapping no longer does anything. Dean slumps on the bunker floor, unmoving. Sam’s shoulder aches and stings and it’s as if the wound burrows deeper inside of him. Not that Sam cares.
Jack tries to snap his fingers again and again. He stares up at Sam in fear and flies away with a flutter of his wings.
Sam kneels next to Dean and rolls him onto his back. He snaps his fingers and Dean’s neck rights itself once more and he breathes.
On Saturday, Sam becomes God.
-
“No. No friggin’ way. You’re not God. I call bullshit,” Dean says as soon as Sam informs him of his new deity status.
Sam snaps his fingers again and a pizza appears on the table.
“Okay, seriously? You become a God and your instinct is to create a pizza. I can do the same while being a regular person. Gimme a pizza joint’s number and twenty minutes,” Dean says with a breathy laugh. Sam can tell he’s freaked. He could calm Dean down if he wanted, make him be okay with it. Maybe even forget some of Sam’s previous sins.
He also knows he’d never rummage in Dean’s head like that.
“A Hawaiian pizza, no less.” Dean picks up a piece and gives it a sniff in disgust. Dean thinks fruit on pizza is a worse abomination than socks with sandals. “Gotta say, this is no turning water into vino.”
Sam shrugs. “I wanted Hawaiian. So it’s Hawaiian.” He samples a piece himself. It’s a delicious pizza with the perfect ratio of dough to toppings. Being all-powerful comes with a perk or two.
“So. Say you’re God. What are you gonna do now?” Dean asks. “You can do anything you want, right?”
Sam considers the vast fields and valleys of possibilities in front of him.
“There has to be something that you want,” Dean says. “A kinky librarian girlfriend. An unlimited supply of dusty old books. A picture-perfect documentary about every true crime case you ever looked into.”
Sam thinks about it. These are things he’d like to have, of course, but the desire isn’t burning enough to snap his fingers and make them be.
-
“I think I’m God,” Sam says sheepishly. They tracked down Chuck. Chuck was hidden from Sam, even though Sam became a fellow member of the God Club, but Dean had the genius idea to call His old agent, and lo and behold, she knew exactly where Chuck was.
Chuck didn’t get a lighthouse, but He did buy a respectable shack near the sea. It’s decaying just enough to look rustic, but still be functional. Sam suspects Chuck poured some leftover godly powers into making sure it looks just right.
A retro typewriter is perched on a large oak desk.
“Sure are,” Chuck says. “I put a safeguard into this world when I made it. To prevent myself from going rogue. If God loses his way, the title of God is transferable to the next worthy person in line.”
“Like, uh, Thor’s hammer?” Dean snorts.
“Bingo.”
“Means you lost your way, then,” Sam says, tense.
“I did, and I’m willing to admit it,” Chuck says. “But it worked out okay. I’m writing a new novel. Walker. It’s about cowboys. Gonna be a hit. I can just taste the sales.”
“Like Walker, Texas Ranger?” Dean raises his eyebrow, staring at Him. “That’s already been done, y’know. Chuck Norris, baby.” Dean clicks his tongue.
“Okay, yeah, it’s a reboot kind of a thing, but it’s a new, fresh, original take! Totally different,” Chuck says, defensive. “And just wait for my next project, too: an edgy reimagining of the superhero genre. You’re gonna love it.” He winks at Dean who seems more than a little ambivalent and somewhat murderous at once. Chuck clears his throat. “Anyway, yes, Sam. You’re God. Congratulations. Go save us all. Make my world whole again.”
“Your world?”
“It was working just fine, wasn’t it? Jack’s been messing with my perfect formula.”
Yeah. It was working just fine, what with the wars and the pain and the utter unfairness of it all. “I don’t know, Chuck.” Sam chuckles, anxious. “With all, erm, due respect, I think your formula could use some improvements.”
“You’re going to have to take it up with Chaos.” Chuck shrugs. “If you want bigger changes than cosmetic crap like candy canes and lollipops raining from the sky, you’ll have to go to where it all began. The Greeks got it right: there was a power before God, before me and my sister. Chaos, from whom we were born.”
Sam nods, apprehensive but willing. Chaos it is. This isn’t his first cosmic powers rodeo.
“You’re really doing this? Then you need to find what to tell your tale with.” Chuck leans back in his chair, His fingers laced together. “God is a writer. You have to find something that resonates with you for the best process. Then you can move mountains. For me, it’s my typewriter here.” He pats it, gentle like Dean is with the Impala’s dashboard. “For Jack, it’s a crayon. For you… ah, I believe I wrote a relevant passage in the Winchester gospel a few months ago!” He turns around and starts rummaging in His desk’s drawers, going through pages of text. Sam pulls a black pen out of his jacket’s breast pocket.
“Aha! Found it! It’s a…” Chuck’s face falls when he sees the pen in Sam’s hand. “You figured it out without me. Aw, c'mon, I wanted to take part in this story!”
“I think,” Dean says, “you’ve done more than enough for the story, pal.”
“But this is the last chapter. The grand finale,” Chuck says. “All things must come to an end, I suppose. It’s been a good one, at least. And, man, I loved my heroes. You two are a once-in-a-writing-career success.”
He vanishes into thin air. Yeah, leftover God powers, like Sam thought. Safeguards or not, Chuck isn’t going to let Himself get completely drained.
“Show-off,” Dean says to the empty chair.
-
Jack sets up camp in Jimmy Novak’s old place. Pontiac, Illinois. A tiny suburban house with a white picket fence. The kind Sam used to dream of before he realized picket fences aren’t for guys like him. The house is surrounded by an invisible force shield, courtesy of Jack’s original Nephilim powers. Dean kicks it and it won’t budge. He hurts his toes and hisses through his teeth. Sam touches it and it ripples under his fingers. Nothing can stop him, nothing of this Earth.
Now for the hard part.
“I think,” he says, turning to Dean from the other side of the invisible fence, “this is as far as you should go.”
“What the fuck, Sam?!” Dean slams his fist against the force-field. “Let me through!”
“It’s too dangerous for you. If I…” Sam drags his fingers through his hair. “I don’t want you to be in the blast zone if something goes wrong.”
“Fuck you,” Dean snarls. “We do this together-or not at all!”
“I’m sorry, Dean,” Sam says. He is apologetic. It feels wrong that Dean won’t be there at the end of this story. But Dean isn’t God. Dean is just a person. There’s no place for a person where Sam’s going. There are no roads for their car over there, either.
He finds Jack on a tire swing in the backyard. Pictures drawn in crayons are scattered on the ground near his feet.
“It’s not working at all anymore,” Jack says to Sam. “But it never worked, not how I wanted it to. And I tried to bring Castiel back, but he kept coming back all wrong.”
Sam picks one of the drawings up. Jack, Castiel, Sam, and Dean are depicted eating ice cream from cones. Dean’s ears are comically large and Sam’s hair is worthy of Rapunzel. Castiel is rocking long eyelashes, like spider legs. The colors are bright. Jack drew this with love.
“Ice cream falls from the sky and Sam and Dean love me again and Cas comes back and we’re a happy family again,” Jack wrote. He writes his “k”s backward, a bad habit Sam couldn’t seem to train him out of.
“You can’t make us feel things, Jack. Not even if you’re God,” Sam says, soft. He could’ve adjusted Dean’s feelings, before, but Dean and him… it’s a different situation, not like anyone else on this planet. Sam knows what Dean’s heart looks like well enough to know just how to fine-tune it and make it sing. Jack’s attempt to bruteforce love was doomed to fail from the jump. Sam can’t possibly blame the guy for trying, though.
“Are you here to kill me?” Jack asks, resigned. “I’m sorry, Sam. I’m sorry I didn’t let Dean shoot me. This is why bad things have been happening, right? Because I’ve been bad. I’m sorry I lost my soul. I don’t know what I’m doing, Sam.”
“You’re not bad. You’re not bad, hey, no,” Sam says, and pulls Jack into a hug, right against his heart. Jack relaxes into it, making a little content noise. Sam watches videos of baby animals to unwind, and Jack reminds him of all the kittens, puppies, and otters at the same time. “I’m not here to kill you. I’m here to make things right.”
“Okay…” Jack says, unsure but trusting.
Sam sits on the ground, leaning against a tree and pulls out his pen. He flips Jack’s drawing over, to an empty page.
It’s hard enough to write an ending to a story you yourself are writing. Sam learned that in grade four when they tried to write short stories in English class and he couldn't figure out where the gripping narrative of the adventures of a dog named Spot was leading. It’s even harder when someone else wrote the beginning for you. Harder-and easier because you have an outsider perspective. After all, when it comes to TV shows, every fan knows how they wish their favorite series would end.
Sam’s no fan of Chuck’s story, but he’s been following it closely for thirty-something years now. So he’s qualified. He has to believe he is.
What’s scarier than a God unsure of what His Holy Will actually is?
Sam starts writing before he can begin to doubt himself.
-
Chaos trickles into Sam’s vision slow like molasses at first, gradually building up to a crescendo of a void. There’s no air, no water, no nothing. Sam doesn’t have a physical body anymore, but somehow he’s still holding a concept of a pen in a concept of his fingers. Sam would have gotten a little scared, maybe, but fear is something understandable and visceral and real and there’s nothing understandable in the Chaos. Not even for God, apparently.
“You want to fix the world,” the Chaos says. It says it in a million voices, a choir reverberating in Sam’s not-eardrums. Sam swears he can make out some familiar ones. Castiel. Jody. Ash. Dad. Dean.
Definitely Dean.
“A noble beginning. What do you think a better world would look like?”
“I don’t want the non-humans to suffer anymore,” Sam says clumsily. He doesn’t want to say “monsters”. It doesn’t sound right.
“You could kill them all,” the Chaos whispers. Sam makes out faces, ones he knows, ones he doesn’t, ones he’s never seen in his life and ones he’s seen somewhere before. “We could take care of this, you and I.”
“No,” Sam insists. “No, that’s… that’s like genocide. That’s not an option. Can’t all of us become human?”
“This is a much bigger ordeal,” the Chaos replies. “It’s easy to discard tainted things. It’s harder to purify them.”
Sam would have agreed with that at some point-when he was the tainted thing in question. Sometimes it felt like it would be so much easier to give up and count himself out as something past redemption. But right now, he is so glad he didn’t.
“So you insist.” The Chaos sighs, a thousand sighs melted into one. They ruffle Sam’s hair in a blast of hot air. “Be that way. But remember, you can’t perform miracles without giving something in return.”
That’s how things work. Sam was hoping being God was different, but at his core, Sam was still a human, not God. And humans have to make sacrifices.
“What do you want?” Sam asks. “What will it take?”
The Chaos gives its answer.
Sam usually says “no” to unwieldy forces greater than him. Consider that an old habit that dies hard. But today, Sam says yes.
-
Heat. Fire. A sharp taste of smoke in his lungs.
A strong pair of arms lugging him outside, as his feet tangle together and trip over every obstacle in their path. Sam coughs, but he’s okay. Alive.
It’s Dean who’s yanking him outside. His face is covered in soot, and his shirt’s collar is twisted. Stars sway somewhere above Sam’s head. Dean helps him stay upright with a tight squeeze of fingers on his arm.
“Hey. Are you okay?” he asks Sam as soon as they’re at a safe distance away from the fire. Dean’s asked Sam this many times before, but never so clinically, a check-in because it’s his job and nothing else.
“Do you remember me?” Sam blurts out.
“Sorry, no. Have we met?” Dean asks, a frown creasing his forehead.
“My name is Sam,” he says, desperate to see any flicker of recognition in Dean’s eyes, but Dean still looks just as confused.
And Sam knows his deal has been sealed, signed, and delivered to the depths of Chaos. The world’s a better place now, with a caveat: there’s no place for Sam Winchester in this brave new world.
“Hey, Sam. I’m Dean,” Dean says. Like Sam doesn’t know, like he hasn’t called it out over and over again. When he was scared, when he was happy, when he was in pain-like that name hasn’t been his lifeline for years.
“Are you, um… a firefighter?” Sam asks just to keep talking. He can’t let Dean go just yet.
“Yeah, I actually am. But I’m not here in a professional capacity or anythin’. I was visiting my friend Jo who lives that-a-way,” he points at a house nearby, “when I saw this place go up in flames. Of course I had to go do something-good thing I did, too, dude, you almost burned in there-”
Sam almost wishes he did.
-
Castiel and Jack are standing next to the picket fence in their PJs, watching their house burn down. A guinea pig cage and a cat carrier are standing at their feet. The little crooked sign in front of the house is still standing. It reads “The Klines”. Sam’s heart squeezes, exhilarated and anguished all at once.
“Cas?” Sam tries, voice soft.
“Hello,” Castiel says, tilting his head. “How do you know my name? Have we met?” He doesn’t seem to remember that Dean dragged Sam out of the fire, too.
“My name is Sam,” he says. “I moved in down the street a few weeks ago. Wanted to make sure you were alright.”
“Well, my name is Castiel. And this is Jack, my son,” Castiel says, shaking Sam’s hand. He still shakes hands weirdly, holding them for much too long, and his voice is as gravely as ever. Sam’s glad some things don’t change.
“We’re fine,” Jack says, chipper. “It sucks that our house burned down, but these were just things. We’ll be okay.”
Sam smiles. The cat meows from the carrier and makes it rattle, and Jack bends down to check on his furry friend. Castiel glances down at his son and back at Sam. His eyes are void of any recognition, and he looks surprised and taken aback that anyone is even there.
“Hello,” Castiel says, confused. “Do I know you?” He doesn’t remember. He can’t.
Sam understands then, looks away, blinking back tears. He strokes his hand over his shoulder. The wound is gone. None of this has happened before, and Sam’s not sure how to navigate it. His brief flirtation with being a deity is over. He’s not God anymore.
No one is, and that’s how Sam wanted it, but it scares him all the same.
-
Sam often feels out of place. A broke-ass jumpy weirdo at school, a geeky girly-ass weirdo at home, he longed to find somewhere else where he’d just fit in like a puzzle piece. Like Dean seems to wherever he goes. Stanford felt like that for a hot minute, and sometimes-not always, but sometimes-riding the shotgun in the Impala felt like that too. More often than not, he still longed for something better than his life. Yes, with Dean by his side, and the rest of his little patchwork family, too, but something with less danger and less heartache baked into it would’ve made a huge difference.
The whole world rejecting him was new, though.
A man with Sam’s skills knows how to use people instantly forgetting him to his advantage. Sam gets to stay in a nicer hotel than he normally would. There, he catches up on the news. The world is a better place now: Sam fixed global warming and cured some of the nastier diseases, created a few ceasefires all over the world and toppled a few authoritative states.
And he made every supernatural being belong. No more suspicious nighttime deaths, no more bodies with missing hearts. The only monsters left are the regular people kind.
Sam half-expects humanity at large to mess this second chance up, but he did all he could.
-
Sam steals a nondescript Ford from a car dealer’s backlot and takes random roads, drives without any purpose or destination. On one particularly sunny Thursday, the roads take Sam back to Lawrence, Kansas.
Their old house stands unscathed, looking exactly like it did in Dean's heaven and the old pictures, the ones before the fire. Dad is in the garden, watering the flowers from a large yellow watering can. The garden reminds Sam of his own, back in the bunker, except it's much more luscious and there are fewer good for spellwork plants. Mom sits in the armchair on the terrace, doing today’s crossword. She flirtily asks Dad what he thinks “six down, second letter “A”, a group of people related by blood or marriage” is. A chess table stands next to her, the game half-finished. Sam watches.
If he came up to them, they wouldn’t know his name.
Familiar heavy footfalls make Sam whip around. Dean’s standing behind him, holding groceries. A large baguette comically sticks out of one of Dean’s shopping bags, like a cartoon.
“Oh, hey!” Dean says, surprised. “You’re the guy from the Illinois fire. Sam, right? What are you doing here?”
Sam takes one step in Dean's direction, another, and collapses against him, arms going around Dean’s middle. Face buried in the crook of Dean’s neck, he cries. Dean remembers him. Maybe not all of him, but he remembers enough.
Dean awkwardly hugs back, squeezing Sam close. “What happened?” he asks, confused. “You doing alright there, champ?”
All better now, Sam thinks. Maybe Dean was the end of this story all along. They were always playing by different rules than everybody else.
This has never happened before-except it has.
This wasn’t supposed to happen again-except it did.
“It’s okay, Sam,” Dean says, and Sam knows it will be.
Recipient: wetsammywinchester
Rating: PG-13
Word Count or Media: ~7000 words
Warnings: temporary major and minor character deaths, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it suicidal ideation. The fourth wall gets lightly kicked a couple times.
Author's Notes: Dear wetsammywinchester, I hope this story is to your liking! I chose the “Soulless Jack keeps bringing Sam and Dean, his humans, back to life (even when he’s the one who kills them)” prompt. And a big thank you to M. for the last-minute beta!
Summary: Soulless Jack is a capricious God. Sam has something to say about that.
Sam Winchester has a favorite kind of pen. Dime-a-dozen black ballpoints, the kind you can pick up in every town. Even when you’re stuck in Nowhere, USA, you can find a pen like this. The ink cartridge is safely tucked in a transparent plastic body and capped with black on both sides. An unscrewing cap to change the cartridge on the bottom and a cap with a flap to tuck the pen safely into your pocket on the top. There are often teeth marks on the bottom end. Sam scolds himself for chewing his pens, but can’t stop the nervous habit. After all, Sam has many things to be nervous about.
Sam grows attached to these pens because they’re cheap. He can buy a bunch even with his meager allowance and keep his school notes looking consistent. If Dean found out, he would say Sam needs to keep his OCD in check and that it didn’t matter if your notes all had the same ink or not. But there aren't many things Sam can control in his life. He doesn't get to decide whether he goes or stays. He doesn't get to decide whether he wants to hunt or not. And when he gets older, there are many things like possession and pain and death Sam has no say over either.
But he can choose the pens he takes his notes with.
They don't look like much, but you shouldn’t be fooled by their humble appearance. It doesn’t take a Parker pen to jot down a poem or to sign a death sentence or to write down the calculations that will eventually lead to curing cancer. And Sam's ballpoint pens are quite like their owner: unassuming and easily overlooked, but holding phenomenal power behind them.
One only needs to know how to apply it.
-
Sam comes to a halt between two graves.
Jack stands under a willow tree, completely still like he’s just another statue on a headstone. Castiel’s crumpled body lies near his feet. Dean is also lying in the grass, a little to the right of Sam, glassy eyes staring into the sky and arms sprawled wide like he’s ready for an embrace. The great Equalizer gun is still clutched in Dean’s dead fingers. Sam knows he didn’t shoot. The jury is still out on whether he wouldn’t or couldn’t.
“This isn’t what I had planned,” Chuck says from behind Sam somewhere.
“What did you have planned?” Sam asks, voice as steady as it could be, considering Dean and Castiel died five minutes ago and Jack’s gone nuclear and he’s the last man standing. All things considered, he’s keeping it together pretty well.
“You know, Abraham and Isaac, Moriah, the whole nine!” Chuck gestures. “I suppose Dean couldn’t kill Jack. Same as your father couldn’t kill you, Sam. He passed the buck on to Dean… who didn’t do it, either.” Chuck sighs. “I’ve been writing for so, so long. It’s hard not to repeat myself.”
He takes a step forward and adjusts his little maroon jacket. He looks very Godlike.
“It all happened before. And it all will happen again. There’s nothing new under this moon.” Chuck sounds tired. “I’m tired of this whole subplot. It’s getting unwieldy. And I like Jack’s character, I do, but you have to kill your darlings sometimes.”
He snaps his fingers. Jack’s eyes and mouth flash white, and he arches as Chuck smites him. But the glow quickly fizzles out, and Jack shakes the light off like a wet dog, the sparks landing in the grass.
“No!” he screams, a petulant child, and reaches forward with his hand. Jack grabs Chuck with his power and shakes him like a ragdoll. “No, no, no!”
He tosses Chuck aside, right into a gravestone. Chuck makes a pained noise and rolls over onto his back. A glow envelops Jack’s skin.
“I’m God now,” he says. Sam has the worst of deja vus, Castiel overrun by the Leviathans and making the same proclamation. That’s what Chuck said, right? It all happened before and it all will happen again.
Except this isn’t going according to Chuck’s plan. So maybe this is something new.
Chuck sits up and snaps his fingers over and over again, but nothing happens. Not a rustle of wind, not a fluttering of wings of a bird overhead, nothing.
“I’m God,” Jack insists. Sam grabs the gun and shoots Jack, point-blank. Jack jerks away and it gets his shoulder, not his center mass Sam’s been aiming for. Everyone’s gone, he could’ve at least have taken down the new soulless deity on his way down.
Sam’s shoulder echoes with pain, and he collapses in the grass, right next to Dean’s dead body. He pulls Dean close in a Pieta facsimile.
This is the parking lot where a mugging went bad. This is the Mystery Spot, the owner shaking with a shotgun in his hand. This the floor of a suburban house full of Hellhounds, their invisible claws leaving behind bloody gashes as they claim a damned soul. This is a grimy street under a bridge, Dean bleeding out in his arms with a Mark on his own.
It all happened before and it will happen again. This universe has certain rules and patterns it likes to adhere to.
“Why did you do this?” Jack whines. “You hurt me!”
“You killed Dean,” Sam says. If Jack knows them at all, he knows that “because of my brother” is the biggest trump card in the Winchester family. It’s the biggest excuse and explanation and justification of all. It’s my brother. I have a right to shoot to kill now, see? That’s what brotherhood looks like.
“You should’ve just said that.” Jack pouts. He snaps his fingers and Dean’s breathing. Again. “I’ve got some stuff to do, but I’ll see you guys later, okay? Awesome!”
Sam pulls Dean closer, and it takes Dean an unusually long time to say “Hey, man, I’m fine, geddoff!” which means Dean is really out of it.
“I was wrong. My casting was wrong. You’re Abraham,” Chuck says. Sam glares at him as he kneels to pick up Castiel’s body.
Dean picks up the gun.
Chuck snaps his fingers in alarm. Nothing happens.
“He was manipulating us, Dean. All along. All these years, everything we’ve ever been through, it’s been for his amusement,” Sam says, just on that side of bitter and spiteful that he’s not exactly proud of. He likes to think of himself as someone who gives people second chances. Chuck’s literally God, though. Sam prayed to him so many times. Sam begged him to help.
And Chuck thought, how fun! and piled on some more troubles just to watch Sam squirm. So Sam doesn’t have it in him to feel bad about Dean punching Chuck square in the face.
“I suppose I deserved that,” Chuck mumbles, cradling his cheek in his hand.
“Think you deserve another one?” Dean snarls.
“Stop,” Sam says, voice weak.
Dean drops his hand to the side and exhales.
-
Turns out, it’s opposite day: God’s not God anymore. Chuck’s batteries aren’t just drained. They’re removed.
“Jack’s got your juice?” Dean asks. “Heh. Jack got your juice. Say that ten times fast.” They’re back at the bunker. Chuck sulks in one of the chairs in a way that’s absolutely unbecoming to a deity. Sam’s wound has been inspected and bandaged by Dean. Chuck notes he doesn’t know anything about non-lethal wounds caused by his gun which causes Dean to go on a tirade about Chuck’s uselessness. Even now, he’s side-eyeing Chuck. “How does that even happen? You’re God. The Maker.”
“See, there’s this paradox. Omnipotence paradox, to be exact,” Chuck says, leaning back in the chair. Sam is familiar with it, but he’s never heard it explained by an omnipotent being before, and he’ll take all the opportunities to learn that he can get. “Can an omnipotent being make something more powerful than him?”
“Right. If he can’t, he’s not all-powerful,” Dean says. He’s already got a beer uncapped because this is what you do when you find out that your quasi-child became God. You have drinks. That’s Dean’s answer to all questions of the universe, his own personal 42. “And if he can, then he made something he can’t touch. So he’s not all-powerful again.”
“Precisely. I wanted Jack to be a big deal so he’d pose an actual threat. You kept knocking everything I tossed at you right out of the park. I had to up the stakes. So I poured and poured power into him… I guess I poured too much.”
“So what do we do now?” Dean leans in close to Chuck, face distorted in a scowl.
“We? Oh, no. No, no. I’m not a part of this.”
“You’re God! You can’t just check out.”
“I’m not God, not anymore.” Chuck stands up. “Good luck with saving the world. I’m going to take this opportunity to retire. Go live in a lighthouse, drink port, and write all day. Being God was fun and all, but lately, I’ve been in a rut. I feel like I’ve written everything I possibly could’ve about you guys!”
“Right. Everything has already happened before,” Sam mumbles.
“Bingo. I mean, I stooped to so many storyline rehashes. Yowza. And, ugh, the supporting cast decline? Ketch and Mick were fun, but they’re no Ellen and Jo and Ash. Maybe I shouldn’t have...” Chuck takes one look at Dean’s face and clears his throat. He hastily turns around and starts walking up the bunker’s stairs. “Anyway, I must bid you adieu.”
“Wait!” Sam calls after him. “Are you actually not going to do anything?!”
“Sorry,” Chuck says. He opens the door and grunts. “I’ll give you your first hint, though. Look outside.”
They clamber up the stairs, getting in each other’s way until they finally look outside. It’s mid-day, but the sky is blooming with different colors, a year’s worth of sunsets blended into one. Purples bleeding into blues and into reds, pale yellows swirling around them and bursting into oranges. It’s a regular Pollock, someone tossing paint on a canvas from a respectable distance and watching it swirl and mix and drip.
“I suppose he thinks he’s improving on my blueprints.” Chuck scoffs. “I chose blue skies for a reason. In fact, I painted them this shade when I saw that the light was good. Those were simpler times.” He sighs. “Whatever. Get him. Do what you do every evening, Pinky and the Brain. Try to save the world.”
“We don’t take orders from you,” Dean snaps. “Not anymore.”
“Is it really an order,” Chuck asks with a faint, Godlike smile, “when it’s something you would’ve done anyway?”
-
The world got a new God on Thursday. On Friday, Dean chops wood and Sam makes a pyre for Castiel. They say a few words and have a few drinks. There’s not much to say. They held a pyre for Castiel and Mary a year ago. They held another pyre for Mary a few months ago. It’s getting harder and harder to give original eulogies. Sam can almost understand Chuck who grew bored with the two of them.
On Saturday, they hit the books. But there’s nothing in them about how to kill God. Chuck wouldn’t have included an Achilles’ heel for himself in their lore books. If there was a failsafe Chuck knew how to set off, he would’ve told them. He might be an asshole and a bastard and many other expletives, but he seemed to hate what Jack was doing with the place.
No, there isn't anything in the books. And Sam loves books, so it’s killing him to admit it. But if they want to do this, they’ll have to think outside of the box.
On Sunday, nothing happens. Nothing of importance, that is. Dean buys groceries since you need to eat even when your kinda-sorta son takes over the world. Dean makes them a nice meal: burgers and fries. They eat in silence. Sam takes care of his garden after dinner. He’s been growing herbs and veggies in it, but he hasn’t had the time to give it the love it deserves, so it’s a touch sad-looking.
So is Sam. He’s heard that plants can pick up on their gardener’s mood. If that’s true, these plants are reflecting him fairly. They don’t deserve to be saddled with Sam’s sadness, but that’s all Sam has to offer.
On Monday, the weather gets stormy. Localized hail rains specifically on the town of Lawrence. That’s odd enough for late April in Kansas, but what makes it even weirder is that the hail tastes like ice cream. The meteorologists are baffled. Sam and Dean are not. Jack is God now, and ice cream hail makes sense in Jack’s Bizzaro World.
Dean suggests going outside and opening their mouths wide to catch as much ice cream hail as they can. Sam laughs because that’s what you do when your brother makes bad jokes and it’s the end of the world o’clock.
There’s a flurry of an ice cream snowstorm that night, with beautiful white slopes that taste and smell like crème brûlée. The city of Kansas sends out snowplows, but by the time they get ready to clean Lawrence up, the ice cream is gone.
On Tuesday morning, the trees and flowers get tall. Real tall. Redwood-tall. A giant strawberry lands in front of the bunker’s door, taller than even Sam’s height. The trees all shot up in an overnight growth spurt.
Sam chokes on a piece of salad during dinner. Dean tries to perform the Heimlich maneuver, but the leaf is lodged snugly in Sam’s throat. Sam suffocates at 14:17 on a Tuesday. (John ingrained the use of military time in them when they were young, and it's been a habit ever since.)
Sam doesn’t like Tuesdays much. This doesn’t help.
Jack appears in the Bunker’s kitchen six minutes, three seconds later. Later, Sam will figure Dean was already on the bargaining stage of grief, so he must’ve been almost happy to see Jack arrive. At the moment, Sam isn’t figuring anything out, since he’s busy being dead and slumping against the kitchen wall. You’ll have to excuse him for that.
“Oh no,” Jack says. “Sam, you can’t do that. You have to wake up.”
He slaps Sam’s cheeks like he must’ve seen the brothers do to each other when one of them has been knocked unconscious. Since Jack is God, Sam rouses from his eternal sleep at the first touch of Jack’s fingers. He coughs and spits the leaf out onto the kitchen floor. Drool dribbles out of the corner of his mouth.
“I saved him,” Jack says. “See, everything is good, right? We can be friends again?”
“Yeah, you saved him,” Dean says, and narrows his eyes into a suspicious squint as he helps Sam back to his feet. “Somehow, for thirty-odd years he managed never to kick it that stupidly, and the second you become God, he happens to choke on some salad?”
Jack huffs but doesn’t say anything.
“I see straight through your one-man good cop bad cop routine, buddy,” Dean says. Dean’s not scared of a thing. Never has been. Schoolyard bullies and omnipotent gods, Dean will stare them down and tell them to get bent.
“I just want to be friends again.” Jack looks away. “But I guess I have to win you over. You always liked me less. But Sam, you still like me, right?”
“Jack,” Sam says, keeping his voice soft. Or trying to. He just choked to death on a leafy green, after all. “Please… come home. We can discuss this and we can help you. Everything will be okay. You don’t have to be God. We want you here anyway.”
Jack gulps, eyes darting from Sam’s face to Dean’s. “I don’t believe you. You tried to lock me up in a box. Even though I killed Lucifer! For all you. You don’t understand. I’m trying to keep you safe.” He paces the floor. “I’m trying to make the world better. For you! Someday you’ll appreciate this. I promise.”
Jack vanishes.
“Man, I fucking told you,” Dean says to the emptiness of the kitchen, “healthy food kills.”
Sam laughs hysterically. His shoulder wound aches in tune with his ribcage convulsing with a laughing fit.
-
On Wednesday, the road in front of the bunker becomes a winding river, with clear water and plenty of fish. Jack’s waiting for them, perched on a rock, his sneaker-clad feet dangling above the water’s glossy surface.
“Remember when you took me fishing, Dean?” he asks, beaming. “We were friends then. Here.” He makes three fishing rods come into being. One second they aren’t there, the next they are. Dean picks up one of the fishing rods.
“What if we don’t play?” he asks.
“You should.” Jack glares. An invisible force clotheslines Dean where he stands. If Sam wasn’t so freaked, he’d have a nice little chortle about how ridiculously Dean toppled over. Instead, he gives Dean a long pleading glance, wordlessly asking him to humor Jack.
“Maybe I should make the river a river of beer!” Jack says excitedly once they’re sitting down. “Would you like that? You like beer a lot, Dean.”
“You should make things like they were, kiddo,” Dean says. “That world worked just fine.”
“No, it didn’t! It didn’t. That world sucked.” Jack huffs. “In my new world, everyone will be happy and safe all the time. No more scary things. No more losing anyone you love. We’ll have… fishing and snacks and friends all day long.”
“Jack…” Sam says. A fish tugs on his bait, but he doesn’t reel it in. “The world isn’t supposed to be like that.”
“Who says?” Jack frowns. “Maybe it’s Chuck who was wrong, and I’m making the world better!”
He picks one of the fish up. “Will you teach me how to gut a fish, Dean?” A mean-looking knife appears in Dean’s lap. Not the most subtle of threats.
“Yeah,” Dean says after a beat. He’s good with that stuff.
“Remember,” Jack says as Dean works on slicing a fish open, “remember when I was just born and you wanted to gut me like a fish?”
“I-I never said that.”
“But you thought it,” Jack says, and Dean takes in a breath and doesn’t breathe out. A deep gash travels up his clothes, and Sam’s having deja vu again-
Everything happened before, especially Dean dying. That has happened over a hundred times on one single Tuesday alone. And later, on some other days of the week as well.
“Stop it!” Sam screams, grabbing Jack by the shoulders. “Jack. Leave him alone.”
“He was mean to me. All I wanted… all I wanted was for somebody to understand me,” Jack says sadly.
“I know. I know! I was there, remember? I listened. And Dean, he cares about you too now, so stop. Please.”
Jack sighs and makes Dean whole again. Dean wheezes, sucking air into his restored lungs.
“I don’t think I like fishing anymore,” Jack says. He turns to his pile of fish and brings them to life one by one before releasing them back into the deep waters. “It’s stupid.”
-
On Thursday, the sky rains red strawberry jelly. Dean puts a bucket outside.
“It could be poisonous,” Sam says as Dean puts the bucket on the kitchen table.
“Life’s too short to worry about that,” Dean says ominously as he picks out a large spoon to dig in. “And Jack won’t let it stick.”
“No,” Sam says. Tries not to think about another being that promised him he’ll never die, not even if he really wanted to.
Well, actually, two beings. Both Lucifer and Dean promised him that. In very different ways.
Sam tries to think of one and not the other. Then he tries to think of neither. Sam’s forayed into meditation a few times, but it didn't do much for him. He never could make his brain a clean slate. Too scared to let go.
His shoulder wound aches and squirms. It’s not a regular wound. It feels alive. Later that night, Sam takes off his shirt in front of the mirror in his room. He watches the wound swirl like a little whirlpool of flesh and prods it with his index finger.
Sam sits down at his desk and writes down his observations in a black ballpoint pen. He chews on the bottom end too, just a little.
-
On Friday, Mary Winchester walks into the bunker.
Sam knows she’s come back wrong the second he sees her baking homemade pies in the kitchen. Jack is trying to impress Dean, as much as he resents the man. It’s the father paradox. Sam is all too familiar with that one himself.
Fake Mary pats Sam’s cheek, and her hands are nowhere near soft enough for the real thing. She keeps pulling pie after pie out of the oven even though it would never fit that many. Not-Mary doesn’t rest until every single surface of the bunker’s kitchen is covered in pies. Apple, cherry, pecan, take your pick.
When Sam and Dean don’t immediately warm up to her, Jack dissolves her mid-sentence in frustration.
-
On Saturday, Dean yells at Jack, letting him have it for killing Mary and then taunting them with a mirage. Jack snaps Dean’s neck and rebuilds him anew with all the curiosity of a kid pulling wings off a fly. He does it over and over again in the bunker’s library as Sam pleads, begs, and watches. Watches Dean jerk to the tune of Jack’s finger-snaps. The opening scene of West Side Story gone very bad, Sam's panicked brain thinks incredulously.
On that same Saturday, Sam squares his shoulders and says “no” with all the confidence he has. And suddenly Jack’s snapping no longer does anything. Dean slumps on the bunker floor, unmoving. Sam’s shoulder aches and stings and it’s as if the wound burrows deeper inside of him. Not that Sam cares.
Jack tries to snap his fingers again and again. He stares up at Sam in fear and flies away with a flutter of his wings.
Sam kneels next to Dean and rolls him onto his back. He snaps his fingers and Dean’s neck rights itself once more and he breathes.
On Saturday, Sam becomes God.
-
“No. No friggin’ way. You’re not God. I call bullshit,” Dean says as soon as Sam informs him of his new deity status.
Sam snaps his fingers again and a pizza appears on the table.
“Okay, seriously? You become a God and your instinct is to create a pizza. I can do the same while being a regular person. Gimme a pizza joint’s number and twenty minutes,” Dean says with a breathy laugh. Sam can tell he’s freaked. He could calm Dean down if he wanted, make him be okay with it. Maybe even forget some of Sam’s previous sins.
He also knows he’d never rummage in Dean’s head like that.
“A Hawaiian pizza, no less.” Dean picks up a piece and gives it a sniff in disgust. Dean thinks fruit on pizza is a worse abomination than socks with sandals. “Gotta say, this is no turning water into vino.”
Sam shrugs. “I wanted Hawaiian. So it’s Hawaiian.” He samples a piece himself. It’s a delicious pizza with the perfect ratio of dough to toppings. Being all-powerful comes with a perk or two.
“So. Say you’re God. What are you gonna do now?” Dean asks. “You can do anything you want, right?”
Sam considers the vast fields and valleys of possibilities in front of him.
“There has to be something that you want,” Dean says. “A kinky librarian girlfriend. An unlimited supply of dusty old books. A picture-perfect documentary about every true crime case you ever looked into.”
Sam thinks about it. These are things he’d like to have, of course, but the desire isn’t burning enough to snap his fingers and make them be.
-
“I think I’m God,” Sam says sheepishly. They tracked down Chuck. Chuck was hidden from Sam, even though Sam became a fellow member of the God Club, but Dean had the genius idea to call His old agent, and lo and behold, she knew exactly where Chuck was.
Chuck didn’t get a lighthouse, but He did buy a respectable shack near the sea. It’s decaying just enough to look rustic, but still be functional. Sam suspects Chuck poured some leftover godly powers into making sure it looks just right.
A retro typewriter is perched on a large oak desk.
“Sure are,” Chuck says. “I put a safeguard into this world when I made it. To prevent myself from going rogue. If God loses his way, the title of God is transferable to the next worthy person in line.”
“Like, uh, Thor’s hammer?” Dean snorts.
“Bingo.”
“Means you lost your way, then,” Sam says, tense.
“I did, and I’m willing to admit it,” Chuck says. “But it worked out okay. I’m writing a new novel. Walker. It’s about cowboys. Gonna be a hit. I can just taste the sales.”
“Like Walker, Texas Ranger?” Dean raises his eyebrow, staring at Him. “That’s already been done, y’know. Chuck Norris, baby.” Dean clicks his tongue.
“Okay, yeah, it’s a reboot kind of a thing, but it’s a new, fresh, original take! Totally different,” Chuck says, defensive. “And just wait for my next project, too: an edgy reimagining of the superhero genre. You’re gonna love it.” He winks at Dean who seems more than a little ambivalent and somewhat murderous at once. Chuck clears his throat. “Anyway, yes, Sam. You’re God. Congratulations. Go save us all. Make my world whole again.”
“Your world?”
“It was working just fine, wasn’t it? Jack’s been messing with my perfect formula.”
Yeah. It was working just fine, what with the wars and the pain and the utter unfairness of it all. “I don’t know, Chuck.” Sam chuckles, anxious. “With all, erm, due respect, I think your formula could use some improvements.”
“You’re going to have to take it up with Chaos.” Chuck shrugs. “If you want bigger changes than cosmetic crap like candy canes and lollipops raining from the sky, you’ll have to go to where it all began. The Greeks got it right: there was a power before God, before me and my sister. Chaos, from whom we were born.”
Sam nods, apprehensive but willing. Chaos it is. This isn’t his first cosmic powers rodeo.
“You’re really doing this? Then you need to find what to tell your tale with.” Chuck leans back in his chair, His fingers laced together. “God is a writer. You have to find something that resonates with you for the best process. Then you can move mountains. For me, it’s my typewriter here.” He pats it, gentle like Dean is with the Impala’s dashboard. “For Jack, it’s a crayon. For you… ah, I believe I wrote a relevant passage in the Winchester gospel a few months ago!” He turns around and starts rummaging in His desk’s drawers, going through pages of text. Sam pulls a black pen out of his jacket’s breast pocket.
“Aha! Found it! It’s a…” Chuck’s face falls when he sees the pen in Sam’s hand. “You figured it out without me. Aw, c'mon, I wanted to take part in this story!”
“I think,” Dean says, “you’ve done more than enough for the story, pal.”
“But this is the last chapter. The grand finale,” Chuck says. “All things must come to an end, I suppose. It’s been a good one, at least. And, man, I loved my heroes. You two are a once-in-a-writing-career success.”
He vanishes into thin air. Yeah, leftover God powers, like Sam thought. Safeguards or not, Chuck isn’t going to let Himself get completely drained.
“Show-off,” Dean says to the empty chair.
-
Jack sets up camp in Jimmy Novak’s old place. Pontiac, Illinois. A tiny suburban house with a white picket fence. The kind Sam used to dream of before he realized picket fences aren’t for guys like him. The house is surrounded by an invisible force shield, courtesy of Jack’s original Nephilim powers. Dean kicks it and it won’t budge. He hurts his toes and hisses through his teeth. Sam touches it and it ripples under his fingers. Nothing can stop him, nothing of this Earth.
Now for the hard part.
“I think,” he says, turning to Dean from the other side of the invisible fence, “this is as far as you should go.”
“What the fuck, Sam?!” Dean slams his fist against the force-field. “Let me through!”
“It’s too dangerous for you. If I…” Sam drags his fingers through his hair. “I don’t want you to be in the blast zone if something goes wrong.”
“Fuck you,” Dean snarls. “We do this together-or not at all!”
“I’m sorry, Dean,” Sam says. He is apologetic. It feels wrong that Dean won’t be there at the end of this story. But Dean isn’t God. Dean is just a person. There’s no place for a person where Sam’s going. There are no roads for their car over there, either.
He finds Jack on a tire swing in the backyard. Pictures drawn in crayons are scattered on the ground near his feet.
“It’s not working at all anymore,” Jack says to Sam. “But it never worked, not how I wanted it to. And I tried to bring Castiel back, but he kept coming back all wrong.”
Sam picks one of the drawings up. Jack, Castiel, Sam, and Dean are depicted eating ice cream from cones. Dean’s ears are comically large and Sam’s hair is worthy of Rapunzel. Castiel is rocking long eyelashes, like spider legs. The colors are bright. Jack drew this with love.
“Ice cream falls from the sky and Sam and Dean love me again and Cas comes back and we’re a happy family again,” Jack wrote. He writes his “k”s backward, a bad habit Sam couldn’t seem to train him out of.
“You can’t make us feel things, Jack. Not even if you’re God,” Sam says, soft. He could’ve adjusted Dean’s feelings, before, but Dean and him… it’s a different situation, not like anyone else on this planet. Sam knows what Dean’s heart looks like well enough to know just how to fine-tune it and make it sing. Jack’s attempt to bruteforce love was doomed to fail from the jump. Sam can’t possibly blame the guy for trying, though.
“Are you here to kill me?” Jack asks, resigned. “I’m sorry, Sam. I’m sorry I didn’t let Dean shoot me. This is why bad things have been happening, right? Because I’ve been bad. I’m sorry I lost my soul. I don’t know what I’m doing, Sam.”
“You’re not bad. You’re not bad, hey, no,” Sam says, and pulls Jack into a hug, right against his heart. Jack relaxes into it, making a little content noise. Sam watches videos of baby animals to unwind, and Jack reminds him of all the kittens, puppies, and otters at the same time. “I’m not here to kill you. I’m here to make things right.”
“Okay…” Jack says, unsure but trusting.
Sam sits on the ground, leaning against a tree and pulls out his pen. He flips Jack’s drawing over, to an empty page.
It’s hard enough to write an ending to a story you yourself are writing. Sam learned that in grade four when they tried to write short stories in English class and he couldn't figure out where the gripping narrative of the adventures of a dog named Spot was leading. It’s even harder when someone else wrote the beginning for you. Harder-and easier because you have an outsider perspective. After all, when it comes to TV shows, every fan knows how they wish their favorite series would end.
Sam’s no fan of Chuck’s story, but he’s been following it closely for thirty-something years now. So he’s qualified. He has to believe he is.
What’s scarier than a God unsure of what His Holy Will actually is?
Sam starts writing before he can begin to doubt himself.
-
Chaos trickles into Sam’s vision slow like molasses at first, gradually building up to a crescendo of a void. There’s no air, no water, no nothing. Sam doesn’t have a physical body anymore, but somehow he’s still holding a concept of a pen in a concept of his fingers. Sam would have gotten a little scared, maybe, but fear is something understandable and visceral and real and there’s nothing understandable in the Chaos. Not even for God, apparently.
“You want to fix the world,” the Chaos says. It says it in a million voices, a choir reverberating in Sam’s not-eardrums. Sam swears he can make out some familiar ones. Castiel. Jody. Ash. Dad. Dean.
Definitely Dean.
“A noble beginning. What do you think a better world would look like?”
“I don’t want the non-humans to suffer anymore,” Sam says clumsily. He doesn’t want to say “monsters”. It doesn’t sound right.
“You could kill them all,” the Chaos whispers. Sam makes out faces, ones he knows, ones he doesn’t, ones he’s never seen in his life and ones he’s seen somewhere before. “We could take care of this, you and I.”
“No,” Sam insists. “No, that’s… that’s like genocide. That’s not an option. Can’t all of us become human?”
“This is a much bigger ordeal,” the Chaos replies. “It’s easy to discard tainted things. It’s harder to purify them.”
Sam would have agreed with that at some point-when he was the tainted thing in question. Sometimes it felt like it would be so much easier to give up and count himself out as something past redemption. But right now, he is so glad he didn’t.
“So you insist.” The Chaos sighs, a thousand sighs melted into one. They ruffle Sam’s hair in a blast of hot air. “Be that way. But remember, you can’t perform miracles without giving something in return.”
That’s how things work. Sam was hoping being God was different, but at his core, Sam was still a human, not God. And humans have to make sacrifices.
“What do you want?” Sam asks. “What will it take?”
The Chaos gives its answer.
Sam usually says “no” to unwieldy forces greater than him. Consider that an old habit that dies hard. But today, Sam says yes.
-
Heat. Fire. A sharp taste of smoke in his lungs.
A strong pair of arms lugging him outside, as his feet tangle together and trip over every obstacle in their path. Sam coughs, but he’s okay. Alive.
It’s Dean who’s yanking him outside. His face is covered in soot, and his shirt’s collar is twisted. Stars sway somewhere above Sam’s head. Dean helps him stay upright with a tight squeeze of fingers on his arm.
“Hey. Are you okay?” he asks Sam as soon as they’re at a safe distance away from the fire. Dean’s asked Sam this many times before, but never so clinically, a check-in because it’s his job and nothing else.
“Do you remember me?” Sam blurts out.
“Sorry, no. Have we met?” Dean asks, a frown creasing his forehead.
“My name is Sam,” he says, desperate to see any flicker of recognition in Dean’s eyes, but Dean still looks just as confused.
And Sam knows his deal has been sealed, signed, and delivered to the depths of Chaos. The world’s a better place now, with a caveat: there’s no place for Sam Winchester in this brave new world.
“Hey, Sam. I’m Dean,” Dean says. Like Sam doesn’t know, like he hasn’t called it out over and over again. When he was scared, when he was happy, when he was in pain-like that name hasn’t been his lifeline for years.
“Are you, um… a firefighter?” Sam asks just to keep talking. He can’t let Dean go just yet.
“Yeah, I actually am. But I’m not here in a professional capacity or anythin’. I was visiting my friend Jo who lives that-a-way,” he points at a house nearby, “when I saw this place go up in flames. Of course I had to go do something-good thing I did, too, dude, you almost burned in there-”
Sam almost wishes he did.
-
Castiel and Jack are standing next to the picket fence in their PJs, watching their house burn down. A guinea pig cage and a cat carrier are standing at their feet. The little crooked sign in front of the house is still standing. It reads “The Klines”. Sam’s heart squeezes, exhilarated and anguished all at once.
“Cas?” Sam tries, voice soft.
“Hello,” Castiel says, tilting his head. “How do you know my name? Have we met?” He doesn’t seem to remember that Dean dragged Sam out of the fire, too.
“My name is Sam,” he says. “I moved in down the street a few weeks ago. Wanted to make sure you were alright.”
“Well, my name is Castiel. And this is Jack, my son,” Castiel says, shaking Sam’s hand. He still shakes hands weirdly, holding them for much too long, and his voice is as gravely as ever. Sam’s glad some things don’t change.
“We’re fine,” Jack says, chipper. “It sucks that our house burned down, but these were just things. We’ll be okay.”
Sam smiles. The cat meows from the carrier and makes it rattle, and Jack bends down to check on his furry friend. Castiel glances down at his son and back at Sam. His eyes are void of any recognition, and he looks surprised and taken aback that anyone is even there.
“Hello,” Castiel says, confused. “Do I know you?” He doesn’t remember. He can’t.
Sam understands then, looks away, blinking back tears. He strokes his hand over his shoulder. The wound is gone. None of this has happened before, and Sam’s not sure how to navigate it. His brief flirtation with being a deity is over. He’s not God anymore.
No one is, and that’s how Sam wanted it, but it scares him all the same.
-
Sam often feels out of place. A broke-ass jumpy weirdo at school, a geeky girly-ass weirdo at home, he longed to find somewhere else where he’d just fit in like a puzzle piece. Like Dean seems to wherever he goes. Stanford felt like that for a hot minute, and sometimes-not always, but sometimes-riding the shotgun in the Impala felt like that too. More often than not, he still longed for something better than his life. Yes, with Dean by his side, and the rest of his little patchwork family, too, but something with less danger and less heartache baked into it would’ve made a huge difference.
The whole world rejecting him was new, though.
A man with Sam’s skills knows how to use people instantly forgetting him to his advantage. Sam gets to stay in a nicer hotel than he normally would. There, he catches up on the news. The world is a better place now: Sam fixed global warming and cured some of the nastier diseases, created a few ceasefires all over the world and toppled a few authoritative states.
And he made every supernatural being belong. No more suspicious nighttime deaths, no more bodies with missing hearts. The only monsters left are the regular people kind.
Sam half-expects humanity at large to mess this second chance up, but he did all he could.
-
Sam steals a nondescript Ford from a car dealer’s backlot and takes random roads, drives without any purpose or destination. On one particularly sunny Thursday, the roads take Sam back to Lawrence, Kansas.
Their old house stands unscathed, looking exactly like it did in Dean's heaven and the old pictures, the ones before the fire. Dad is in the garden, watering the flowers from a large yellow watering can. The garden reminds Sam of his own, back in the bunker, except it's much more luscious and there are fewer good for spellwork plants. Mom sits in the armchair on the terrace, doing today’s crossword. She flirtily asks Dad what he thinks “six down, second letter “A”, a group of people related by blood or marriage” is. A chess table stands next to her, the game half-finished. Sam watches.
If he came up to them, they wouldn’t know his name.
Familiar heavy footfalls make Sam whip around. Dean’s standing behind him, holding groceries. A large baguette comically sticks out of one of Dean’s shopping bags, like a cartoon.
“Oh, hey!” Dean says, surprised. “You’re the guy from the Illinois fire. Sam, right? What are you doing here?”
Sam takes one step in Dean's direction, another, and collapses against him, arms going around Dean’s middle. Face buried in the crook of Dean’s neck, he cries. Dean remembers him. Maybe not all of him, but he remembers enough.
Dean awkwardly hugs back, squeezing Sam close. “What happened?” he asks, confused. “You doing alright there, champ?”
All better now, Sam thinks. Maybe Dean was the end of this story all along. They were always playing by different rules than everybody else.
This has never happened before-except it has.
This wasn’t supposed to happen again-except it did.
“It’s okay, Sam,” Dean says, and Sam knows it will be.