The Increase of Knowledge, for steeplechasers
Title: The Increase of Knowledge
Recipient: steeplechasers
Rating: PG
Word Count or Media: ~2900
Warnings: Spoilers for the end of s11. Religious themes. Passing mention that Sam was sexually assaulted in Hell.
Author's Notes: Many thanks to my beta, who made this story so much better.
Summary: Chuck invites Sam to meet him for diner food and a chat.
“What would you say to God, if you had the chance now?” Sam asked. He looked out the window over his desk, the better to avoid eye contact. His vegetable garden, never impressive, was wilting by the minute in the Kansas heat. “What would you ask? Hypothetically, of course,” he hastened to add.
It wasn’t hypothetical. A note had appeared on his kitchen counter that morning. He’d turned away to put in a clean coffee filter, and when he turned back it was there, scribbled on a torn out piece of notebook paper: “Lunch at Sally’s diner, tomorrow at noon?-Chuck.” Sam was bringing rock salt, silver, borax, and holy oil, but he was going. There was no evidence that it wasn’t a trap, but frankly he’d have been more suspicious if it’d appeared written in forty foot flaming letters in the sky. A casual note was more Chuck’s style. Anyway, it looked like Chuck’s handwriting. Sam mostly believed it.
“Does it matter?” Cas said. He was drifting aimlessly around Sam’s living room, as he usually did when he came to visit. He wasn’t the sort to settle back into the couch and make himself at home, still uneasy in human spaces, even after all these years. Instead he wandered from object to object, running his finger along the spines of the books on Sam’s shelves, or earnestly contemplating the fancy pen his girlfriend had given him for his birthday. “He’s not in Heaven. He’s not in Purgatory or Hell, either, according to my sources. No one’s seen him on earth since he left with Amara. He’s gone.”
Sam felt guilty, but he didn’t tell Cas about the note. He hadn’t told Dean either. Maybe they’d get their own letters when the time was right. Maybe Chuck had a reason for leaving them out of the message. Maybe Chuck had forgotten they existed. He hadn’t struck Sam as a “no sparrow falls” kind of God. Whatever the reason, Sam had decided he’d wait and see what Chuck wanted, and then figure out what to tell Dean and Cas.
“But if you could talk to him?” Sam insisted. Until the letter he hadn’t believed he’d see God again in this lifetime, or even in the next, any more than Cas did. He’d felt immensely flattered to get Chuck’s message, like a child summoned to the North Pole to meet Santa, and at the same time some part of him wished he’d never seen it. It was a test he hadn’t had time to study for, an unimaginably important opportunity he’d almost certainly waste. When he’d met Chuck years ago he’d thought it was his only chance, but there’d been too much else to think about then to really talk: another Apocalypse he’d helped create, and Lucifer walking the earth again, this time wearing the face of his friend.
His friend who let Lucifer out of the Cage, his friend who never warned him, his friend who let him believe his enemy was one of the very few people on earth he trusted. He and Cas had never talked about it, and they never would. Maybe Cas had done the right thing, and maybe he hadn’t. Either way, Sam didn’t want to relive all the gory details of serving as Lucifer’s meat suit, and he didn’t have enough friends that he could afford to hold a grudge.
“I don’t know,” Cas said, and pressed his thumb against his temple. It was an oddly human gesture, like he had a headache. “Why are you asking me this? What would you say?”
Every time Sam tried to put together a list of questions, they twisted around in his head: Will I be with my loved ones in Heaven? (Could you bake a file into a cake for me?) Do you hear my prayers? (Do they matter to you at all? Should I stop?) Was Azazel part of your plan? (Did I deserve it?) Was Hell? (Did your son need to rape me so many times?)
He supposed he could walk into the diner tomorrow and just unload on Chuck. A smiting seemed unlikely at this late date. But raging against the heavens had always been Dean’s thing. Sam was the believer. It was one of the ways he distinguished himself from his brother, like having long hair or growing a vegetable garden. He just didn’t have it in him to be angry at God.
“I’m not sure,” Sam said finally. He leaned back in his office chair. “I think I’d want to know why, maybe. About a lot of things. And just . . . how to live, you know? What he wants me to do with my life. How to help set right the things I’ve done wrong.”
“I wanted to ask God those questions myself for a long time.” Cas was looking down, curiously prodding the dog’s squeaky owl toy with the tip of his shoe. In other circumstances Cas’s solemn contemplation of the object would’ve quietly amused Sam, but at the moment it didn’t feel funny. “Why he left us. Why he brought me back. I still wonder that sometimes-If it was meant as reward or punishment, or if I’m only alive because there’s something I was meant to do that I still haven’t accomplished.”
Cas shook his head. “But I’ve found something here. In my friendship with you and Dean. With Claire. I don’t know if I’m a ‘better person.’” Cas had learned enough about human body language over the years that he didn’t use finger quotes around ‘better person,’ but Sam heard it in his voice.
“But I know I’m different, and I’ve found moments of joy here on earth that I never would’ve experienced if I’d stayed in Heaven. I don’t know if that makes everything that’s happened worthwhile, if that happiness is worth all the people whose deaths have paved my way. What I do know is, I looked for God for a long time, and he didn’t want to be found. And that when he was finally there, right in front of me, I had nothing to say. I believe now, perhaps, that he was right to hide, and I was right to stay silent. Maybe it’s better we take the journey ourselves.”
Cas smiled, an expression rare enough that it still surprised Sam every time it happened. “Or maybe I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.”
Sam laughed. “If you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, what hope do I have?” It struck Sam that there’d been a time when he was every bit as much in awe of Cas as he was in awe of God now. When they’d first met, Sam would’ve loved to sit down with an angel and get him to answer a list of questions. He’d learned eventually that most of those questions were ones that Cas struggled with too. Cas was a fellow traveler, not an oracle. Sam wondered how much climbing a rung up the cosmic ladder would really change that.
“Thanks, Cas,” Sam added after a moment. “I know this probably wasn’t the conversation you were hoping to have this morning.”
“Not really, no.” There wasn’t a smile this time, just a quick glint of humor it had taken Sam years to learn to see.
Cas leaned over him to look out the window, his arm bumping fondly against Sam’s.
“Your tomato plant is dying.”
Sam looked up at him and smiled. “Yeah, I know.”
++++
Original Recipe Chuck was a mediocrity who’d been all too happy to trade his unremarkable life for a first class ticket to the finest digs in Heaven. Good old Original Recipe thought he’d gotten the better end of that bargain, shuffling off this mortal coil for an eternity of blowjobs and nachos. He hadn’t understood how, after eons of infinite power and crushing responsibility, mediocrity could feel like a pretty sweet deal.
Chuck-he preferred that name these days, even in his own head-had found mediocrity phenomenal. He’d gone into the experience planning to do it right, to really dig down and discover all the beautiful facets of human existence. But, well, being hungry sucked, and practicing guitar gave him blisters. It hadn’t taken long for him to start editing out the unpleasant bits. Kicking back with a beer in a dark-paneled bar in Greenwich Village, listening to some struggling folk singer, and picking up pretty young musicians to take home for the night, now that was the life.
This Kansas diner had coffee sludgy enough to summon up memories of those old New York dives. Coffee so exceptionally bad required more than neglect to develop; it needed an intentional, deep-rooted contempt for the customer. Chuck was impressed. He found himself wishing he were back in his old apartment in the Village, the last place that had really felt like home, strumming his borrowed fingers across a stolen guitar and preparing for an entirely uninspired performance at the Gaslight.
“So, Sam,” he said, and rubbed two sugar packets together between his thumb and forefinger. He hadn’t felt this nervous about a conversation since he’d first introduced the Darkness to Lucifer. There was nothing at stake here, not even a base player position in a knock-off folk band, so he wasn’t sure why he cared. He did, though, painfully. He blamed his meat suit. It had always been twitchy.
“Yeah?” Sam said, wide-eyed and encouraging, when Chuck didn’t finish his sentence. Sam looked older than Chuck remembered. There was gray hair sprouting at his temples, and fine lines around the corners of his eyes. Chuck thought he’d only stepped away to talk to his sister for a few days, but he’d never been good at keeping track of time without the natural clock that was built into a human body. Apparently his conversation with the Darkness had run longer than expected.
Chuck felt simultaneously cramped and relieved to be back in his old vessel. Its brain could only hold a fraction of his true self. By its very nature it edited him down to fit the limits of a human consciousness, converting him into a being that could be contained in three pounds of brain and an unimpressive tangle of muscle and bone. In human form he always felt the unsettling weight of his true self looming just outside his body, incomprehensible and eager to reunite with the part of himself that was Chuck. Sometimes he wished it would go away forever, and let him be mediocre in peace.
“I, uh, I wanted to tell you it meant a lot to me, you volunteering to take the Mark of Cain, even though it didn’t work out,” Chuck said. Okay, good, honesty and appreciation, that was a positive start. Chuck was trying to be better this time around, the loving dad and all-around awesome dude that he’d failed at being for Lucifer. “And the praying and all. I get a lot of calls, you know, can’t return them all, but I appreciate the support.”
“Anything I can do for you, I’m always happy,” Sam said, beaming like a schoolgirl who’d gotten a private audience with Justin Bieber. That probably wasn’t a current reference anymore. Once he got out of here, Chuck was going to have to go find whatever had replaced record stores, and look up who was cool now.
Sam was still looking at him expectantly, and Chuck was out of things to say. He hadn’t really thought beyond the gesture of appearing, to the awkward question of what the hell they were going to talk about. He was glad he’d grown out of his ‘signs and wonders’ period, but the nice thing about a burning bush was that no one expected it to do small talk.
“So, that’s it, really,” Chuck said finally. “Just wanted to say thanks. I’d drop in on Dean, too, but he and my sister used to have a thing, and it’s kind of weird. Family stuff. You know how it is. You should tell him I said hi, though.”
Sam only looked confused. “Look, I’m trying to be a better a person. Deity. Whatever. This is me trying.”
Sam tipped his head in acknowledgment. “I get it. I mean, I think I get it,” he added quickly, as if he might’ve offended Chuck. “As much as a human can understand you, of course.”
They sat in uncomfortable silence for a bit. Chuck willed his coffee cup to refill, since it didn’t look like the waitress was coming back around any time soon.
“Can I ask you a couple of questions?” Sam said finally. “If you don’t mind? I mean, as long as you’re here.”
“Shoot.” Chuck couldn’t imagine Sam asking any question he’d want to answer, but he was trying to be more accountable this time around. Transparency was good.
“Are aliens real?” Sam asked. This wasn’t the question Chuck had expected him to lead with.
“There’s intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, and I figure you guys will meet up with it someday. The whole flying saucers and probing deal, not so much.”
He debated mentioning the telekinetic squid people of the Alpha Centauri system who were currently en route to earth, but their generational ship was unlikely to arrive during Sam’s lifetime, so there was no reason to worry him.
“Cool.” Sam smiled, dimples still prominent in his lined cheeks. He seemed to reflect for a moment, fiddling with the handle of his coffee cup without lifting it to his mouth. “What about the Kennedy assassination?”
Chuck shrugged. “Boring story. Lone gunman, just like they said.”
“Why does the skin on my left big toe always crack?”
“You pronate your foot. You need better posture and a high quality athletic shoe.” These were not the kind of questions people normally asked Chuck when he revealed that he was God, Himself, In Person. Which, granted, made this more interesting than the millionth iteration of ‘Why do you allow innocent people to suffer?’ But it still threw him for a loop.
“Look, Sam, I’m a big believer in arch support, but this is your one shot with me. Is this really what you want to know?”
Sam ducked his head and rubbed the back of his neck, somewhere between amused and embarrassed. “I know, I know. Every question sounds ridiculous when you’re talking to God, doesn’t it? But the thing is, I’m kind of . . . happy. I’ve made a good life for myself these past few years, working as a Man of Letters. I’ve got friends. I’ve gotten to a good place with Dean. There’s a woman I’m fond of, and for reasons I don’t fully understand she’s fond of me too.”
He looked up, but not at Chuck. His gaze went out the window, toward the half-empty parking lot and the highway beyond. “I used to want to ask why about so many things. In the world, in my life. But now . . . I don’t know. I muddled through and built something good for myself. If you gave me The Answer,” the capitalization was obvious in his voice, “I worry maybe the muddling part wouldn’t mean as much anymore. It’s safer to ask about things that don’t matter too much--aliens, or Kennedy, or big foot, or whatever. I’d rather figure out the big picture stuff as I go.”
“Hey, I get it. I’m a writer. No one wants a book spoiled.” Chuck did get it, and he envied Sam. Chuck never had to worry about spoilers, because he had them all. The universe was his novel, and like most authors he found few things more frustrating than re-reading his own work. A lot of days all he could see in the world were the typos it was too late to fix.
“And I’d be the first to say divine intervention doesn’t generally work out well,” Chuck added, “even when I’m trying to help. Especially when I’m trying to help.” He willed money to appear on the table. “Anything else you do want to ask me while you have the chance?”
Sam shook his head. “I’ll think of a million things as soon as you’re gone.”
Chuck got up to go, but turned back at the door. “You mentioned big foot. There’s one in the woods north of town right now. Peaceful creatures, really. Probably the last chance you’ll get to see one in the wild.”
Sam smiled. “I’ll bring a camera.”
The heat rising off the pavement was so dense Chuck would’ve been drenched in sweat the instant he stepped outside, if he hadn’t toggled that biological function off. He’d promised the Darkness he’d be “right back,” but he was pretty sure it would take her centuries of human time to notice he was running late. He touched the Coke machine in front of the building, and it spit out a drink. He cracked it open as he walked toward the highway. With any luck he’d be able to hitch a ride into the city.
He could feel his true self looming behind him, as vast as time and space, and as impatient as Chuck waiting for a plate of extra cheesy nachos. It wanted to be whole again. It would have to wait a little longer.