Title: The Hollow Men
Fandom: Smallville/Supernatural Crossover
Pairing: Chloe/Dean
Rating: MA
Spoilers: In Supernatural up to the end of Season 4 with bits and pieces of the beginning of Season 5. In Smallville up to the end of Season 8 with bits and pieces of Season 9.
Summary: When Castiel goes in search of God, he finds Chloe instead. What does she have to do with Lucifer and the end of the world? Can she handle the destiny that is thrust upon her? More importantly can she handle Dean Winchester?
Warning: Major Character Deaths.
Disclaimer: Don't own. Really want.
Authors Note: This story is completely finished. There are 21 Chapters in total and I will be updating on a (hopefully) regular schedule of once a week (every Monday). This story wouldn't be anything near what it is today is if wasn't for the hard work and dedication of a few people. iluvquat - who graciously agreed to be my beta and patiently pointed out my many many mistakes while continually pushing me to make the story better, and also contributed a few scenes of her own. lynzie914 - who cheered me on and managed to keep me from sounding like an idiot on more than one occasions. And finally tehzo - who is so incredibly talented that it blows my mind on a daily basis. She provided all the chapter headers for this story (you can see them at my journal) as well as my journal header and icon. If you're not familiar with her work you should go to her site right now because it's totally worth it.

The End

In the End

The Love You Take

Is Equal to

The Love You Make

-The Beatles

May 2, 2012

The world is going to end today.

This is not a hyperbole.

This is not the wishful thinking of a despondent teenager.

This is not the desperate threat of a raving mad man.

This is simply a statement of fact.

For five years it has been my duty to chronicle the events of the end of the world and I have done my duty. I have written down everything. Everything they wanted me to write. Everything except for this.

For longer than five years I have known how this journey will end. I dreamed it as a child, before I knew how much dreams could really mean. As I got older somewhere in the back my mind, I came to realize it was more than just a dream but I didn't want to admit it out loud. Even after I knew what I was, what I could do, I dreamed it. And I have dreamed it every night since I came to be in this place, but still I've never written it down until now.

The world is going to end today. Just as soon as the rain starts.

I do not write these words lightly. These days I do not write anything lightly.

"What the prophet has written can't be unwritten. As he has seen it, so it shall come to pass."

I never wrote it down because I knew that writing it would set the events in stone. Writing it down would turn it into history before it even has a chance to become the present. I suppose I thought, naively, that as long as I didn't write it there was a chance, the smallest sliver of hope that maybe someone or something could come along and change it.

I know better now. It was always going to end this way. Lucifer was always going to rise and the world was always going to fall. There is no stopping it. There is no last minute rescue. No hero to save the day.

So now I will do the only thing I can do. I will write. I will sit down and write about all of the great and terrible events that will soon come to pass, of how it will all end. More importantly however, I will write of how it all began because one cannot have an ending without a beginning.

And when that is done, when I'm finished, I will sit and wait for the rain.

You might be asking yourself who I am.

I am the Narrator to the end of the world.

I am the Author of the Apocalypse.

I am the Prophet Chuck, and this is how the world ends.

Excerpt from the Winchester Gospels

Castiel stands on the battlefield. The breath his body does not need is greedily, defiantly being sucked into his lungs and then expelled. If only to remind himself that he is still there to breathe if he so chooses. He's forced backward and feels the bones of someone long since dead, crush beneath his heel and doesn't even pause. He licks his lips and tastes someone else's blood. He waits for the rain.

He pulls his sword from a woman's stomach and before her body hits the ground, he has already moved on, his sword clashing with someone else's. The woman's blood still coating the blade is warm and fresh, steaming in the chilly air. He doesn't think about her, can't think about her. There are more enemies to battle, more lives to take. He can't think about the fact that before this, in her former life she was a school teacher, fourth grade. That she has a husband in North Dakota who is sitting by the phone, has been every day for the past eight months hoping that someone will call and say "We've found your wife". They'd been talking about starting a family. She had been three months pregnant when the demon took over her body.

All of these things he knows to be absolute truth even only having just set his eyes on that body five minutes ago. All of these things he knows to be fact and he has no idea why. Before today he had to actively search a person's mind, their memories and feelings to get even the smallest knowledge of their life, but now he knows everything with one simple look. He knows he can look at anyone on this battlefield and know everything there is to know about them. He's known everything there is to know about all the lives of all the men and women he's killed in this place this day. When it's all over, if he's still here, then he will weep for them, for the lives that were interrupted, for the lives they will never have. He will weep for them all, but not yet.

Another body falls, new blood mingles with that of the teacher and he turns, looking for another fight, another kill. He doesn't have to look far. It will be over soon he tells himself. It has to be over soon because he's not quite sure how much longer he can go on this way. He's been fighting for hours now, a never ending onslaught of enemy after enemy. At this point he's using everything he's got, every ounce of strength left in his body just stay upright, just to stay alive. He looks up and the sky is still the brilliant clear blue it was when the sun rose this morning but he waits for the rain and prays.

As his sword clashes with that of his opponent he sees her, standing in the middle of the battlefield. She is still breathing, she is still standing and there is not a scratch on her. She's surrounded by bodies; the field is littered with them, enemies and allies alike. She is drenched in blood, none of it, not a single drop her own. Her shirt is covered with Sam's blood. Already it's begun to dry. It seeped straight through the cotton, clinging to her skin from when she tried desperately, unsuccessfully to save his life. His body lies cold and motionless a few yards away.

Her hands are coated in Dean's blood, it's still relatively fresh and it drips from her fingertips to the ground where Dean lay dead at her feet. She watches it confused, as if she doesn't fully understand why it's on her hands and not in Dean's body. She makes an attempt to wipe it off, but it is a futile gesture, the only purpose it serves is to mix the blood together, making a bigger mess.

She looks around the field at the destruction. Her hand finds its way to the chain around her neck, out of habit more than anything and then she turns her head up into the clear blue sky, falls to her knees and begins to scream. He can't hear what she's saying but he can guess. Her rage is hopeless and serves no real purpose and she knows this, she must, but she can't stop the words spilling from her mouth. When she's done her body sags defeated but she pulls herself to her feet, she will not go out on her knees. She offers up one last plea to the heavens before tearing her gaze away ashamed, finding herself face to face with Castiel.

Their eyes meet and in that split second lightning flashes, slamming into the ground around her, a halo of crackling energy, illuminating the area, and finally, without a cloud in sight, the rain begins to fall.

And now Castiel knows. In that one single instance he knows everything. He knows now how this will end and most importantly, he knows now how it began.

The end of the world.

He thought he knew before. Thought he understood how all of these things came to pass, how he came to be here in this place at this time. He thought he knew who was to blame.

It would be easy to blame Sam Winchester. He killed Lilith after all, the act that broke the final seal releasing Lucifer from his hellish prison.

It would be just as easy to lay that blame on his brother, Dean Winchester. It was Dean who stepped off the rack, Dean who broke the first seal and set the whole thing in motion.

"The first seal shall be broken when a righteous man sheds blood in Hell. As he breaks, so shall it break."

But it was evident to Castiel long ago that neither of them is to blame. Their fates were decided long before their actions condemned them.

He believed that it started, as one would assume, with death, or to be more accurate with eight deaths.

In 1972, the demon Azazel possessed a priest and sacrificed the lives of eight nuns at St. Mary's Convent in Maryland, allowing him a rare opportunity to actually speak to Lucifer.

In a way that was where it all started.

You see, orchestrating an apocalypse is a very precise science. For something, the end result of which is chaos and destruction, you'd be surprised how much planning goes into it.

On that day in 1972, Lucifer told Azazel everything that he would need to do, laid out a timeline for him; a sequence of events where each step must be done at exactly the right time, in exactly the right place, with exactly the right people. A timeline so precise that were even one event out of place or out of time, the whole thing would have come tumbling down like a house of cards.

It was scripted like a play, each act carefully planned down to the smallest detail, the timing, the blocking, the lighting, and the special effects all choreographed down to the second. The playwright: Lucifer. The players, one very special family: The Winchesters.

Mary was manipulated into making a deal, a deal that would inadvertently cost her not only her own life, but set her husband and sons on a path she had no way to even imagine. Jess' death, the catalyst needed to bring Sam back into the fold. John's life, taken in just the right place, at just the right time, under just the right circumstances would be the very thing that would later prompt Dean into offering up his own life when it was Sam's turn. That deal directly placing Dean exactly where he needed to be, exactly when he needed to be there to step off the rack and break the first seal.

Every moment of their lives was carefully orchestrated. They were played with as if they were merely pawns on a chessboard or puppets on a string. They were manipulated time and time again. Everything that happened to them, everything that they did, every life that they took and even every life that they saved led them one step closer to their supposed destiny.

Most importantly, in the end it was all done of their own free will. Despite the manipulation, despite the years of planning and scheming behind the scenes, when it all came down to it, they always had a choice. It may not seem like much, but it makes all the difference in the world. So they made their choices the best way they knew how and when it was all over and done with they were somehow left with a situation that was completely of their own doing yet, at the same time, intrinsically out of their control.

In a way, it did start with eight deaths in a convent in 1972 and went on from there, except for the fact that it didn't. In the end when you string all of these events together they are directly responsible for the end of the world, and at the same time none of them are responsible at all.

All of the choices, all of the deaths and rituals, the seals and the sacrifices were completely meaningless. All of these things, either alone or together hold no power, are nothing more than a random series of events and would have forever been nothing more than a random series of events if it weren't for one thing.

One random, unrelated act, by an unassuming, unrelated person completely changed the course of history in ways no one would ever have imagined, and it happened a good thirty years after that fateful day in 1972.

So Castiel knows now how it really began, and it began like this:

July 5, 2008

It began with a woman.

She emerges from a doorway and makes her way down onto the city street. She buys coffee from a man at a cart on the corner; exchanges a pleasant morning greeting as he hands over the cup and her change. She's smartly dressed, her clothes neatly pressed, her hair and makeup meticulous, a shoulder strap slung across her body, the bag resting low on her hip, bouncing with each step that she takes. She is pretty, if not beautiful, her features cute rather than striking.

There is no way to tell by looking at her that she is broken. There is no way to know that she is bleeding inside, that she feels as if her heart has been wrenched in two, and her life is spilling out of it at an alarming rate. Now way to see that she can't stop the flow and she can't repair the damage, that she's drowning and she can't breathe.

There is no way to tell that her soul, once bright and strong, has now turned brittle and fragile. If you were to look at it you would see a glass that's been broken. It's still intact but instead of being one flawless, solid piece, it now resembles an interconnected web of cracks that seem to run on forever. All the little pieces are frozen in place, in some sort of stasis but one wrong move, one strong breath could cause the whole thing to fall apart. And if that happens, all the king's horse and all the king's men…

No one knows that she suffers like this because she won't let them know. Or maybe they don't want to know, don't want to see it. Maybe when they look at her; they remember the part they played in her tragedy. They want to believe her façade, they want to believe that she's okay because if she's okay then they can be okay, then they can forget.

But she's not okay. She waits at a crosswalk, her head tilted up, her eyes watching the red flashing hand, waiting for it to turn into a green walking figure with the rest of the morning crowd because that's what she does every morning. The coffee she bought nine blocks ago is cooling in her right hand, all but forgotten. She hasn't drunk a sip, she only bought it because she'd always bought it before.

Many days she finds herself standing at the window in her apartment, staring down into the dark night that covers the city with the vaguest feeling she just woke up not five minutes before. Muscle memory has taken over where her brain has stopped and it wakes her in the morning and it feeds her and it clothes her and takes her out and brings her home and the whole time she is oblivious. Her body is prolonging her life without her consent.

But even amidst this pain-this pain that some days she fears will last forever, and some days she fears will not, she is still there. Someday the cracks in her soul will fill in, the glass will harden and get stronger. Someday the bleeding will slow, just a little, just enough for her to take a deep breath, and then another, and then another. Someday she will be okay; she will feel alive again, but not today.

Today she is still broken. Today she is still bleeding. She is still drowning, fragile and absent, and yet...

She crosses the crosswalk with the rest of the crowd. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees a scene unfolding. It's one of the hundreds of thousands of scenes that she passes every day, that she normally sees, catalogues, and dismisses.

A young man is getting out of a cab and he's struggling with something in his arms, a baby carrier. Cradled inside is a baby, no more than a month old, crying. The man whispers nonsense words as he tries to do too many things at once. He balances the bag in his arms, digging in it for something while talking on his phone. Morning commuters, so focused on their own lives, on their own problems, hurry around him, jostling the man, his bag, and the carrier, spinning him in circles.

The baby is still crying and he is still digging for something and the crowd is still converging, oblivious. All it takes is one final push, one passing bump from a man typing on his phone, ignorant to the damage he's about to cause and everything breaks. The man's bag literally rips open from the bottom, the weight of the items inside simply too much for it to handle any longer.

The phone drops from his ear and slides into the gutter. Papers flutter around the street, the wind picking them up and carrying them along. Diapers and wipes tumble to the ground and are crushed under the feet of the morning walkers.

For some reason, this is more than he can take, more than he can possibly handle on this particular morning. He looks at the destruction, at the accumulated flotsam and jetsam of his life strewn about the pavement and he breaks down. He clutches the baby carrier to himself like a shield and shoves his way through the crowd to the steps of a nearby brownstone. He sinks down onto the cold concrete and he weeps.

The woman watches all this and something happens. She is still broken, she is still bleeding and drowning and yet she stops. And bends over. The city goes on around her. She simply becomes one more thing to side step, an inconvenient road block, something to be avoided. But she picks up all of the man's belongings. She retrieves the phone from the gutter, wiping the mud off on her crisp white sleeve. She chases down the papers that are flowing in the breeze, running in front of buses and reaching under parked cars until she has them all.

She empties her own bag onto the ground; her laptop and her folders, random things that were important enough to find their way into the bag but not important enough to find their way out again. She stuffs what she can into her purse and whatever does not fit, she'll just carry. Then she refills her bag with the man's things, the diapers and bottles, the papers and pictures, the wallet and keys and cell phone and she walks over to the stoop and sets it down gently at his feet.

Without saying a word she continues down the street to a coffee cart, retrieves a steaming cup of hot water and returns to the man who is now watching her with interest. She digs in the bag and retrieves one of the bottles, assuming that's what the man had been digging for earlier. She immerses it in the hot water for a few minutes before taking it out, she shakes a bit of the milk onto her wrist then passes it to him.

He takes it from her with tears in his eyes, cautiously unsure but smiles. "Thanks." He pulls the baby from the carrier and proceeds to feed him.

"Sure." The word feels strange coming out of her mouth and she dimly realizes it's because she's barely spoken in weeks. Her throat is scratchy and raw with the effort. "Are you okay?" she asks and she knows he's not because she's not and she can tell. Like it's a secret club, like they're both a member, it takes one to know one.

"No." He laughs at her uneasily and at least he doesn't lie. "My wife is in the hospital," he says, his eyes lifting to the imposing building across the street from them. "Cancer." The impact of the word forces a tremor through his whole body. "Diagnosed three days after…" He looks down at the baby in his arms. "Some days I just don't know what I'm doing and I know if she were here she could do it better and all I can think is that maybe one day she won't be here and I never imagined that she wouldn't be here and I don't think I can do this by myself."

She just stares at him while all of this anguish and doubt spills from his mouth and he blushes, ducking his face away from her.

"God, I'm sorry I didn't mean to dump all that on you. You were nice enough to help me and I can't believe I just totally unloaded on a complete stranger like that."

"My husband died," she says, every new word comes out a little smoother, a little easier. "He was murdered. Two months ago."

"That's sucks," the man says without thinking.

The woman is not hurt however, on the contrary she lets out a bark of laughter, surprising even to her if the look on her face is any indication. She can't remember the last time she laughed.

"Yes, it does suck." She agrees with him, the ghost of a smile still on her face.

"I'm sorry I didn't mean…"

"No." She shakes her head. "It's fine, it's nice even. Everyone else is so…" she trails off. "They never know what to say. It doesn't matter, whatever they say, it's the wrong thing. And they're trying to feed me, like if I'm properly nourished, I can't be sad. My freezer is full of so many casserole dishes that I couldn't possibly eat them if I lived five hundred lifetimes and someone's always there. Always there. Like they're scared to leave me alone." She sucks in a shaky breath, this is the most she's spoken in weeks and it's easier the more she talks.

"The funny thing is, and I don't think they even realize, it's not even about me. They're not trying to make me feel better; they're trying to make themselves feel better. But they can't make things better with words, they can't fix it with food and…they know this but it doesn't stop them." She's on a roll now and she couldn't stop if she tried. " And I want to tell them to just shut up, to leave me alone, that the only thing that could possibly make me feel any better was if they kindly went away and never came back and let me grieve in peace, but you can't do that, not to family. You know?" She looks over at him.

"Yes," the man breaths out in relief because he knows, because that's what his life has been like since he found out. She understands and nothing more has to be said between them, they both just get it. The bottle is finished but the man makes no motion to get up. "I don't think I can go in just yet."

"You don't have to," she says to him. He doesn't ask her to stay but she does. "Apparently it helps to get out of the house, breathe in some fresh air. I read it in a pamphlet. They leave pamphlets all over now, on healing, on moving on. They say you should try walking to work, but I work at home so I have nowhere to walk to. So every day I get up and I get dressed and I leave the house, mainly I go to the park and I walk around. I think it's stupid but it makes them feel better so I do it."

"Does it make you feel better?" he asks her amused.

"No, I hate the park." Chloe shakes her head laughing.

The baby starts crying, ruining the moment. "He needs to be burped," she reminds him and the man blushes for a minute.

"Right," he sputters, "I knew that." He awkwardly lifts the baby to his shoulder and pats it on the back but nothing happens.

"Here." She holds out her hands and though they just met five minutes ago the man passes over the crying child without hesitation. She cradles it against her shoulder and gently rubs circles across the baby's back, coaxing out the gas until they hear a satisfied belch. She smiles and hands the child back to his father who secures him into the carrier.

"You've got spit up on your jacket," he says horrified and she just shrugs.

"It's fine," she assures him.

The man stands then, pulling up the baby carrier and bag with him as he looks determinedly across the street. "Thanks for the bag, and…" The rest hangs in the air, it doesn't need to be said, and they both know this.

"Sure," she says again. The man steps out into the street but she calls out to him to wait. He turns to her confused as she fumbles under her collar for her necklace, a rosary. She pulls it over her head and feels the loss of it immediately, like a cold empty space against her chest. She found it a few days after the funeral and has been wearing it every day since. She stares at it for a second before her muscles once again take over for her brain and she holds it out to the man. "Take it," she tells him, though she doesn't know why.

"No, really." He smiles kindly at her. "I couldn't…I'm not…Catholic."

"Neither am I." She steps forward and presses the beads into his hand, closing his fingers around them tightly. "It was my husband's."

His eyes widen and he tries to give it back to her, shaking his head frantically. "I can't take something that…it's too valuable to you."

"Then don't take it." She smiles and takes a few steps back. "Borrow it." She retrieves her purse and computer from where she abandoned them earlier. "Keep it safe for me and then, one day, when I need it again, you can give it back."

Somehow, in a way he can't understand, this necklace, this symbol of a religion that is not his own, that yesterday would have been nothing more than beads, means more to him than the well wishes from his family, more than the assurances of the doctors or even the smile he can sometimes find on his wife's face while she sleeps. He looks up at the woman, at the way her hands unconsciously rub the spot on her chest where the rosary had been. He knows what it means to her and he knows that he should give it back but he can't so he simply clutches it tighter. "But I don't even know your name."

"Chloe." She smiles. "Chloe Sullivan."

"Steven." He smiles at Chloe. "Steven Temple. It was really nice to meet you Chloe Sullivan."

She tilts her head at him and lets out a deep relaxing breath. "It was nice to meet you too, Steven Temple. I'll see you around someday." She turns and before she can take two steps she is swallowed up by the crowd and he can't see her anymore and she's gone.

Chloe Sullivan was still broken, she was still bleeding, drowning and yet she stopped. She stopped and she helped someone else when she couldn't even help herself. He was a stranger and he was in pain and she could have passed him by. She had her own problems and she had her own pain and she could have kept walking and ignored him like every other person on the street that morning and yet she stopped.

Steven clutches the beads in his hands as he walks across the street, as he enters the hospital and as he sets out for his wife's room. When he woke up that morning he was broken and he was bleeding and he was drowning and yet now he has hope.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

What Chloe didn't know, what Castiel now knows, is that someone was watching her that day. Someone was always watching, always seeing, always waiting. They were waiting for something, waiting for so long. Then Chloe stopped. And when she stopped that morning, she started something else, something horrible and terrible and tragic but in its own way…miraculous.

It's hard to see that part now, in hindsight, the miracle of it all, but Castiel can see it and it's beautiful.

So while it's true that the apocalypse never could have started without all the death, all the sacrifice and the blood and the pain and the suffering, the apocalypse never would have started if Chloe Sullivan had not stopped.

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men