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“Once I rose above the noise and confusion…”
There was a flash, and I heard Kansas playing.
My husband came behind me-I was sitting at my computer-and kissed the top of my head.
“Goodnight, hon. Don’t stay up too late.”
Our boys trailed behind him. On the computer screen in front of me, the ending Chuck showed me glowed white in the darkness of my living room. I sat, dumbfounded, for what felt like hours. What had just happened? My husband was back and he seemed to think everything was fine. It was not fine! My ex shows up out of nowhere and zaps us out of existence? I couldn’t wrap my head around it. But I didn’t have to for very long. There was another flash as Kansas swelled more and then faded altogether from my head, a sound apparently only I could hear since Rod didn’t say anything about it.
I stood up from my chair to confront the figure that appeared in front of me. A boy I could only describe as golden stood perfectly still in front of me. He looked to be between the ages of seventeen and twenty-one. A gasp exited my lungs, but before I could scream for Rod to come help me, the boy raised his hand in greeting.
“Hello. I”m Jack.” He smiled and put his hand down.
“Hello, Jack. What are you doing in my house???” I thought about running to the kitchen for salt or rifling through my desk for the silver pencil case I keep just-in-case. I didn’t spend a lot of time with Sam and Dean in person, but I’m not an idiot. I picked up a thing or two from Chuck’s books. Jack looked at me with sincerity. I forgot about being afraid, curious about what he came for and who he was.
“I’m a friend of Sam and Dean’s,” he said. “There’s a few things I need your help with.”
“I don’t understand.” Sam and Dean needing my help? That didn’t seem right. Why would they need me? They had made it pretty clear that they don’t even like me.
“Here. This might be easier.” Jack crossed around the side of the desk and put two fingertips to my forehead. I had visions flood through me, visions of Sam and Dean with so many different people. I saw Jack’s story, how he was born and Sam, Dean, and Cas raised him like their own. Everything that happened from the end of Chuck’s books to that moment swarmed in my head, even the parts I was there for. Then I saw Sam and Dean, smiling and bloody standing over Chuck and Jack taking his power away. When the visions cleared, I remembered Chuck’s finale written on the computer in front of me.
“No,” I told Jack. “If that just happened…”
Jack finished my sentence. “You know what happens next.”
I skimmed Chuck’s pages. Dean dying on a piece of rebar, Sam living ambiguously in misery, Covid-19 preventing anyone from being together, even in heaven. All of this would come to pass. Chuck’s real ending. He knew he would lose, but Sam and Dean would suffer regardless. Chuck’s ending was always this way. Hopeless. The fans will hate it. The only highlight at all was a shirtless Sam scene and Dean finally overcoming his thing about dogs.
“What can I do?” I would do anything for Sam and Dean. They don’t have to like me. I love them. I’ve always loved them. Toxic behavior of my youth aside, as a fan, I still see so much of myself in them. My therapist helped me come to terms with that. I can project my feelings onto the story without the need to insert myself into it.
“When I took Chuck’s powers, Sam and Dean told me to leave him at the lake. That didn’t feel right. I came back for him and helped him find a place to live. We ended up talking for hours. It was nice to get to know him. Even if he did try to kill everyone. That part isn’t important. I asked him what he would have done differently, and he said that he should have listened to you.”
Chuck saying something nice about me shouldn’t have made me as happy as it did. But there was a time when that was all that I wanted. I couldn’t ignore it now.
“So, Becky, I decided to make you a prophet, my first one.” Jack smiled proudly.
Images of Kevin and Donatello and everything that happened to them flitted over my eyes.
“No thank you.”
Jack frowned. “It won’t be like it was when Chuck was in charge. I promise nothing bad will happen to you, Becky. But I have a lot to fix. There are people out there, people you don’t know about, that are counting on you to write this down for them. If you don’t, Chuck’s ending is all that they will see. I can’t explain all of it. Please help me make this right.”
“I don’t even know how to be a profit.”
“The words will come to you. Don’t worry. I don’t expect you to be as pretentious as Chuck. Just tell them what happens next as it comes to you.”
Jack disappeared then. The document on my computer was blank. I’ve now been typing for an hour and nothing has come to me yet. I’m tempted to make something up, but I don’t think that is what Jack was going for. He seemed to have a real plan, and maybe if I-
Okay this feels weird. I’m seeing Dean and Sam. Like the visions from earlier but I think this is in real time? Sam is going for a jog and Dean is hugging Miracle. The montage of their morning routine is just like Chuck had it before. Now they’re getting pie. Sam smashes Dean’s face with pie. Same as before. Skipping a bit.
Okay, Dean just found the case with the Vampmimes. Sam is calling Jody.
Jody says she knows someone in the area. She is going to give them a call! Dean isn’t going on the case! He is in his room filling out job forms! Miracle is behind him lapping water from his water bowl.
Dean is getting up from the desk in his room. He’s going to the garage. He’s opening Baby’s trunk. Cas’ trenchcoat is still inside, one of them I guess, the empty took the one Cas had on at the time. Dean’s face is so sad, but he isn’t crying or anything. He’s just holding the trenchcoat, rubbing the fabric between his thumb and finger under the lapel.
“Jack, I know you said you wouldn’t interfere...Please help me out one last time. I haven’t always been the best role model for you; I know that. But Cas...Cas always did right by you. You gotta bring him back. Why haven’t you brought him back?”
“Dean.” Jack appears behind Dean much like he did in my house a while ago.
“Well?” Dean doesn’t really want to repeat himself. Besides seeing visions, I can somewhat identify feelings, too. I’m not sure how. I just seem to know.
“I brought Cas back the moment I left you and Sam. It was the first thing I did. I’m not sure why he hasn’t returned to you.”
“Cas is out of the empty?”
“Yes.”
“Thanks Jack. Take care of yourself.”
“I will. I’ll stop back in when I can. There’s still a lot I need to fix. Chuck left this world in shambles, plus I need to restore the other worlds. It has occurred to me that I may need your advice from time to time. There is still a lot I don’t know.”
“You should go upstairs and tell Sam that. You leaving really hurt him.” Jack vanished. In another part of the bunker he greeted Sam and they embraced. They spoke briefly about Jack’s plans, but Jack is informing me he wants to wait to reveal some of those. He wants me to reveal them as he does them. Sam hands Jack a journal, much like John Winchester’s, only this one is blank. Jack doesn’t need it to organize his thoughts, but he feels like the sentiment alone is enough to make him write in it.
Meanwhile, Dean has thrown the trenchcoat back into the Impala. He angrily balled it up so badly that the wrinkles will never come out. But he refuses to pray to Cas. He refuses to entertain the thought that Cas wouldn’t want to see him for any reason. Instead of thinking, he grabs the job forms off of his desk and drives them to their destination. He starts his new job as a park ranger in two weeks after a series of video training. Now he’s driving around in Baby thinking about Cas’ last words before he went to the empty. Not the “Goodbye, Dean” or the “I love you”. It is the “You are the most caring man. I cared about the whole world because of you” that he can’t seem to shake. Even if it is true, and he can’t deny that it is true that he changed Cas. Dean can’t seem to decide if it was the right thing to do. Cas has suffered so much in the last eleven years. Could all of that be attributed to Dean as well? He feels it all in his gut. Every time Cas died or felt pain or the times Dean neglected him. All the while, Cas loved him more and more. Dean feels he doesn’t deserve any of that adoration. In all of that time, what did I ever do that was good for him?
In that moment, Jack returned all of the alternative worlds, each Sam and Dean given relative freedom, the apocalypse canceled for each one, and all of the au members in our world have been returned to their home. In one alternative world, Charlie and her girlfriend are at a table cleaning guns and eating eggs.
Back at the Bunker, Sam is showing Eileen the new system he set up for hunting. He reorganized all of the FBI phones and made a database for all of the hunters and monsters on the radar.
“I got a lot of this info from Garth. He put a lot of it together after Bobby died, but he is pretty much retired now and doesn’t have time.”
Silently, Eileen signed back that she is proud of Sam. Sam asked her to only sign to him for a few hours so he can practice.
Sam tells her that he thinks he can give up hunting this way.
“I’m getting too old to keep doing this.” he accidentally said out loud yet in the habitual way of looking at Eileen so she could read his lips. “I can’t abandon the job. But with Chuck out of the way, maybe I can transition into being like Bobby. I want to look out for our friends, but I don’t think I want to go on jobs anymore. I don’t know. Do you ever think about leaving the life?”
“As a matter of fact, I plan to quit hunting.”
“That’s great, Eileen. I mean, if that is what you want. I would never ask you to quit just because I am.”
“Sam, I have to quit hunting because I am pregnant.”
I know I used to have a thing for Sam that led to some really questionable behavior, but I am so happy for him right now. From what Jack has shown me, he and Eileen are perfect together.
Sam beams at the news. He kisses Eileen while gently cupping her face with both of his massive hands. The kiss breaks, and Sam asks Eileen to move back into the bunker. With Chuck out of the way, she has no problem accepting.
Jack bargains with the empty. The angels and demons asleep there will relive only their best memories.
“If you allow me to do this, there will be no one to wake you ever again. You and the others will be at peace. You can sleep.” The empty agrees. Jack takes a number of angels and demons with him to redistribute. Some are left in the empty. The truly obedient ones. The ones that will cause problems if conscious anywhere. He leaves his father there to dream of the life they could have had together if only Lucifer had loved Jack as much as he had loved himself.
Adam and Michael are returned to Earth in the same vessel. That is what seemed to make them the happiest. But Michael is significantly powered down. He couldn’t heal a broken bone, but maybe he could heal a paper cut if he concentrated hard enough. When they eventually reach heaven together, Michael will keep Adam’s vessel. Adam won’t need it then.
Jack revamps purgatory. From now on, the bad monsters and angels and demons will go to purgatory when they die. Garth and Benny and any other monster, angel, or demon with a good heart will be welcomed into heaven as humans. Crowley has returned to hell to be king and rule alongside his mother. He put in a special order that permits Kevin to enter heaven.
Finally, Jack fixes heaven. Instead of the impersonal silver cubicles Chuck designed, it’s open and much like Earth. Jack found Bobby and asked him what he thought heaven should be.
“Sam and Dean always spoke well of you. I trust your judgment.”
Bobby built heaven with Jack’s power and from the ground up. John and Mary are there, but they rarely come out of the little house Bobby built for them. They have everything they ever wanted in each other.
Dean is still driving around, cursing under his breath without realizing he is praying. “Cas, you son of a bitch.”
Cas appears in the middle of the back seat. “Hello, Dean.” His face is stoic, even for him.
Dean swerves a little to the right and slams on the breaks.
They are on a backroad somewhere in Kansas. Dean jumps out of the car and slams the door. He grabs Cas by the lapels without pulling him in any direction. Dean glances up and down Cas like he’s trying to convince himself that he is there.
“Jack said you’ve been back this whole time, man.” He lets go. “Where have you been?”
“I’ve been in heaven, Dean. I wasn’t sure if you- I was afraid of what you would do if I came back.”
“What do you mean? Look, I understand why you did what you did. I’m not mad. But Chuck is gone now. We have freedom for the first time, and the fact that you chose not to see me…”
Cas squinted his eyes against the sun setting overhead, but he didn’t need to. “You’re not offended by what I said?”
“Offended? I wouldn’t say that, Cas. I think you give me too much credit.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
Dean leans against the Impala and crosses his legs. He looks anywhere but at Cas. “You changed me, Cas. I was fighting for free will without ever really believing in it. If I believe in it now, that is because you showed me it was possible. But mostly, I think I’ve been taking you for granted. You should do whatever makes you happy, Cas. I won’t stand in your way. Not anymore.”
Cas turned to look at Dean like he was the dumbest person he ever met. “All of these years and you still don’t get it. I have proven in every way imaginable that my happiness is you. I’ll say it again. “I love you.”
Dean stood by a second. “This is normally the part where you push me down and a cosmic entity drags your ass to turbo hell.”
Cas lets out a chuckle. He doesn’t move, though. He doesn’t hope that Dean will let him get close.
Dean turns toward Cas and looks him in the eyes. He pulls him into the most desperate hug they have ever shared, his right hand cradling Castiel’s head. Cas uneasily returns the hug, lightly throwing his arms around Dean’s middle. Dean pulls away a little, just enough to connect his lips to Cas’ forehead. Every word he ever wanted to say existed in that one gesture. Castiel understood Dean perfectly then. He’ll have to be patient with Dean, but Cas wasn’t alone in his feelings. The air hung silent with the words Dean meant but may never say.
I Love You.
Jack is still working in heaven. He smiles knowing that Cas and Dean have been reunited, that Sam and Eileen are starting the life they deserve. He looks around at the world he is working to build. He’s nowhere near done, but he’ll get there. Everyone will be exactly where they are supposed to be. No loose ends. No plot holes. And one day, old and in their beds, Sam and Dean will die and ascend to heaven. Two boys, neglected by their father, with nowhere to call home for most of their lives, found family. They always had and always will have each other, but for the first time, it feels like they are free to be more than just the family business.
Chuck used to say endings are hard. I disagree. Chuck just wouldn’t know a good ending if it slapped him in the face. I hope this is what you wanted Jack. Becky out.